Tokyo Olympics Names New Chief Just Months Before Games

TOKYO—The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee named a cabinet minister and woman Olympic bronze medalist as its new main after the preceding leader resigned in excess of sexist remarks.

Seiko Hashimoto, 56, will become a single of the handful of females atop a major corporation in Japan, in which practically all significant-company main executives are adult men. Even so, the appointment delivers its own controversy due to the fact of an incident at the Wintertime Games 7 yrs back when Ms. Hashimoto was accused of harassing a male athlete.

The determination Thursday arrives just five months in advance of the scheduled opening of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo on July 23, with significantly even now uncertain about how the Games can progress beneath pandemic problems. Officials say they have not decided regardless of whether to enable in foreign spectators.

Japan began vaccinating its populace from Covid-19 this 7 days beneath a routine that would make it possible most people today won’t have photographs by the start out of the Games. The Worldwide Olympic Committee is encouraging athletes to get photographs, despite the fact that it states vaccination isn’t a prerequisite for competing at the Games.

Ms. Hashimoto has been a member of Parliament’s upper house since 1995 and served in Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s cabinet as Olympics minister, a submit she gave up to acquire on the presidency of the Olympic organizing committee.