Another setback for Tokyo's beleaguered olympics

THE only remaining calamity that could further dampen the mood around Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic games, it would seem, is an earthquake beneath the 400-metre track. All the other big mishaps have occurred already. On September 1st came the latest embarrassment. Japan scrapped the new logo for its games as accusations of plagiarism swirled around the design, by Kenjiro Sano, a young Japanese graphic artist. Two months earlier the government dumped an ostentatious stadium blueprint by Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi-British architect, that had helped win the bid for Tokyo, after costs spiraled to $2.1 billion, nearly twice the initial estimate.

It shouldn’t take long to whip up another logo, but construction of Tokyo’s stadium (design yet to be decided) is now a year behind schedule. Construction won’t begin until 2016 and it won’t be ready by the time of another sporting fixture, the rugby World Cup in 2019. Japan’s Olympics minister, Toshiaki Endo, has admitted that construction for the games themselves may now come right down to the wire, missing the official deadline set by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of January 2020.