Ichiro Suzuki
The Olympic Games have returned to Paris after 100 years. The Games are under way, having been brilliantly executed by the organization committee. The man at the helm of the committee is 46 year old Tony Estanguet, slalom canoeist with three Olympic golds, in 2000, 2004 and 2012 Games. In 2012, Estanguet was elected to the IOC Athletes Commission. He served as its member for eight years. In 2016, he was appointed to lead the Paris effort to host the 2024 Olympics/ Paralympics.
Estanguet’s backgroud closely resembles that of Lord Sebastian Coe, who headed the organization committee for the 2012 Olympics/ Paralympics in London. Coe was a superstar middle distance runner who rewrote world records a number of times on top of winning two Olympic golds in 1980 and 1984. He was 55 at the time of the London Games, and has been serving as chairman of the International Association of Athletics Federation since 2015. Coe and Estanguet are reportedly in close contact.
For this matter, Peter Uberroth, who ran the 1984 Los Angeles Games, was 46 back then. Casey Wasserman, who will head the organization committee for the next Olympics/ Paralympics in Los Angeles in 2028, will be 54 in four years. Mitt Romney was 54 when he ran the winter games in Salt Lake City in 2002, after his stellar career as a financier. Following the 2002 Games, he went into politics.
In contrast to them, the Tokyo Olympics/ Paralympics Organization Committee Chairman Yoshiro Mori was 83 in 2020 when the Games were set to take place originally. He was the prime minister of Japan for 297 days at the turn of the 21st century, and doesn’t even speak English. If that was not enough, his deputy in the organization committee, Toshiro Muto was 77 in 2020. Muto used to be the Vice Minister of Finance, a position widely recognized as the top ranked bureaucrat among tens of thousands of people who work for the government.
The Mori - Muto duo explains what matters in the Japanese society. Men (sorry, but not women) have to be aged enough with prestigious titles behind them to get big things done. These men have to negotiate with a number of high-ranked men, again not women, who are fairly old, in order to gain support and extract concessions from a variety of parties. It’s very hard, though not impossible, for young men (and women) to tell men in their sixties what can and can’t be done. What’s valued in Japan often is not visions and leadership but years of experiences, which transcend to seniority. The Japanese society stands in the way of young and aggressive doers from getting a job done. This norm still applies on a level of national projects even if the corporate world has become less rigid in the last few decades.
As it turned out, the Tokyo Games’ one year delay had brought a stunning twist to Mori and the organization committee. In February 2021, in a speech he gave to the audience that was close to him, he said “women talk too much”. The remark led to a public uproar and forced him to step down as the organization committee chairman. Mori took a job that he didn’t want, and when he found he had to do it, he insisted on doing it without being paid. Forced resignation didn’t make sense to him since he did it as a duty to his country.
Even worse, as soon as the Games were over, prosecutors brought to light bribery cases that surrounded merchandisers of Olympics-related goods and supplies. The old men at the helm of the organization committee proved that they could deliver. Running an organization focusing on ethics and compliance, however, didn’t seem to have been one of their strengths. Much younger leaders might have been more compliance-conscious in managing such a high profile organization as the Olympics/ Paralympics organization committee.
To replace Mori as the head of the organization committee, the minister in charge of the Olympics/ Paralympics Seiko Hashimoto, then 55, was appointed. Ms. Hashimoto was an outstanding Olympian who participated in four winter and three summer Olympic Games though she didn’t win a gold medal unlike Coe and Estanguet．
The Hashimoto - Muto team accomplished a very challenging task on the already postponed 2020 Tokyo Games. In 2021, the coronavirus had not died down yet, and there were lingering concerns if the Olympics could be really held or not. Even in early July, a few weeks before the scheduled opening day, calls for cancellation had erupted amid soaring infection cases, though their numbers were only in low triple digits in Tokyo. The organization committee made the games attendants-less and created a ‘bubble’ among athletes, coaches, etc. The games were executed according to the plan. Later it was reported that there were about 500 cases of infections in the bubbles of the Olympics and Paralympics. The games didn’t stretch the medical system in Tokyo, as medical authorities had feared. Well done. Chairwoman Hashimoto had proved that it didn’t have to be old men to get things done. However, it is still doubtful that a woman is appointed under the normal circumstances for the next big project that involves the entire country.
*About the author: Mr. Suzuki is a retired investment banker based in Tokyo, Japan.
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