Organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics promised Monday to maintain their efforts after receiving high praise from senior IOC officials in the Japanese capital for a series of meetings.
"There has been a lot of praise, but we will not have the arrogance to be easy," said the chairman of the organizing committee Yoshiro Mori.
"We must not let ourselves go because we still have 600 days left," he added, expecting "difficulties and uncertainties" to emerge from here to the Games, which will open on 24 July 2020.
After a chaotic start, preparations for the Tokyo Olympics are well advanced and the construction of the various sites is in line with the calendar, a situation that contrasts with that of other host cities.
"In some cities, I would say in most of them, we had to organize crisis meetings with the Executive Committee a few months before the Games, and sometimes, when there were only three months left, they were not there. where you are already, " said President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach.
Tokyo 2020, however, faces major challenges, first and foremost the heat that kills several hundred people each summer in Japan.
The organizers acknowledged last week that measures to counter the extreme climate, such as the installation of mobile foggers or the recovery of roads with a special coating absorbing the heat of the sun, would weigh on the accounts.
Nevertheless, they assured, the next version of the budget, to be unveiled later in the month, will not exceed the envelope previously set at 1.350 billion yen (10.3 billion euros).
Concerns had recently emerged after a warning from the Japanese Audit Committee, pointing out that central government spending was well above the original amount. The organizers responded by stating that many of the costs mentioned in the report were in fact not directly related to the Games.
The head of the IOC Coordination Commission, John Coates, called for distinguishing "the operational costs of the Games and the infrastructure investments that will be a legacy" of the event.
The organization of the Games themselves "will not draw on public funds" , he insisted, against a background of popular disaffection in many cities with regard to the Olympics.