Asian Games organizers are bracing for possible weather disruption in the opening few days of the multi-sports gathering with the possibility of a typhoon hitting the Aichi-Nagoya coast on Monday.
The 20th Asiad officially starts with the opening ceremony tomorrow but football, basketball and volleyball competitions are among those already underway in the region.
Tropical storm Dujuan was located off Japan’s Pacific coast yesterday and heading northwest towards central Japan, where Nagoya is located. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 90 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 126km/h.
Torrential rains hit Nagoya and the surrounding region last week, leaving schools closed, train services suspended and forcing several hundred athletes to evacuate their accommodation.
Kosei Inoue, Japan’s chef de mission for the Games and a senior executive board member of the Japanese Olympic Committee, addressed the weather threat at a news conference.
“Due to the heavy rain and severe weather, some competitions have already experienced delays or postponements, and there is also a possibility that a typhoon could approach on September 21,” he told reporters.
“Under these circumstances, we are holding thorough meetings ... to ensure that we are fully prepared and capable of responding appropriately to these situations.”
Accommodation issues continued to plague the lead-up to the Games yesterday with even the host Japan team looking at alternative arrangements after cases in which male and female athletes were allocated shared rooms.
Local organizers, having decided not to build a dedicated Athletes’ Village, looked to creative accommodation options to house the 17,000 competitors and officials arriving for the Games.
Japan’s deputy chef de mission Hisashi Mizutori also talked of some athletes having to wait to get accommodation.
REUTERS
