AGENCIES
TOKYO, July 8: Despite his prominence as Japan's longest serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe may have enjoyed his biggest moment at the closing ceremony of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics before 70,000 at the city's renown Maracana stadium.
As a video was shown with Abe portrayed running late for the handover ceremony, the Japanese prime minister suddenly popped up on stage in Rio to loud applause dressed as Super Mario, the famous Nintendo video game character.
He doffed his red cap to the crowd, and there could be no mistake where the Games were going next. The lettering on his red cap spelled it out: Tokyo.
Abe died on Friday after he was shot giving a campaign speech in the western Japanese city of Nara.
Ever a showman, Abe pushed for the Tokyo Games from the start and then helped keep them on track after being postponed for a year by the COVID-19 pandemic.
He was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2013, seated in the front row of a hotel ballroom when then-IOC President Jacques Rogge opened an envelope to reveal Tokyo as host of the 2020 Games. Seated at the heart of the Japanese delegation, Abe leaped to his feet, raised his arms high, and waved a flag festooned with the logo of Tokyo's bid committee.
Abe and Japan famously campaigned for those Games under the motto a safe pair of hands." This was at a time when Sochi, Russia, and Rio de Janeiro were the focal point of relentless criticism for their preparations; Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics and Rio for the 2016 Summer Games.
Ironically, corruption charges would eventual haunt Tokyo's preparations.
And it was Abe who, in a closing speech to the International Olympic Committee before the vote in Buenos Aires, reassured members that the Fukushim a nuclear disaster which happened in 2011 was under control.
However, it wasn't so. That area of northeastern Japan is still battling to recover even a decade after the tragedy. Many in the region feel the Olympics detracted from the recovery, rather than helped speed it.
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