Tokyo was picked as the ‘safe’ choice for the Olympics. Here’s how everything changed

Back in 2013, Tokyo’s big win to secure the Olympic Games in only the second round of voting — it took out Istanbul 60-36 — rested largely in its insistence to the IOC that as a host, it was a “safe pair of hands,” something that past IOC president Jacques Rogge, a surgeon, said he found appealing. At the time, its biggest hurdle appeared to be the lingering worries around Fukushima nuclear disaster; no one imagined the rise of a novel coronavirus that would leave a global body count in the millions.