At the 125th IOC session in Buenos Aires on Saturday night, it was announced that Tokyo would be the home of the 32nd Olympiad in 2020. Germany's Thomas Bach replaces Dr Jacques Rogge as IOC President and wrestling remains in the 2020 and 2024 Games.

Nick Harding | @nickhdg | Sportscene - Following a first round tie-breaker of 26 a-piece between Istanbul and Madrid, the Spanish capital was outed, Tokyo went through automatically with 42 votes. Round 2, there was no question; a solid Japanese win 60 to 36 over Turkey.

The image of a tearful, Japanese male delegate went viral in a few hours – the symbol of an emotional and historic victory.

Firm favourites in the global media from the outset, the Tokyo bid was also the most risk-free; money-in-the bank ready for construction 'tomorrow' as was put by the Japanese Olympic Committee, an extensive list of corporate sponsors backing the proposal, a growing economy and a highly-efficient transport system already in place even though the airport is one hour away from the city centre.

Not forgetting the real reasons though why the bid was justified – Japan has a rich sporting history and with focus on innovation and progress through technology, it was hard not to ignore the fact that Tokyo could truly deliver a global spectacle that could live up to the standards of London 2012. There were initial thoughts though that the Tokyo promo-vid was too sport heavy with less emphasis on culture and legacy.

Plus the awe-inspiring design of the new National Stadium, offering “a seat to every athlete,"  is nothing short of jaw-dropping. It is a symbol of how far the Olympic entity has grown in popularity and perhaps how commercial it has become, since the 1984 Olympics; Los Angeles was the only city to bid to host it after Tehran pulled out (sourced BBC News). Of course there are still fears over whether the expense of this one venue is justifiable.

Looking to Istanbul and Madrid's bids, both would have made incredible locations for the 2020 Games. Istanbul had so much going for it with its “two continents, one city” campaign and opportunity to promote peace in a currently turbulent region yet perhaps it was recent rioting in the city metres from the proposed Olympic site and events with Syria that have gone against Turkey on this occasion.

Madrid with his humanist, down-to-earth, recession-proof bid also fell short. It was noted, that despite a superb edit featuring Rafa Nadal which was unfortunately only seen by the IOC committee itself and not by the world's viewers because of torrential rain in Buenos Aires, Madrid's presentation was the weakest. Interestingly a poll posted on Twitter on Sunday morning by  newspaper El Mundo suggested that the 71% [by midday UK 8/9/13] of Spanish people agreed that Madrid's elimination was the right decision. 

Ultimately, it seemed the IOC were weary of which city to choose amidst huge-expenditures for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and ever-growing concerns over the slow rate-of-construction and budget limitations being imposed by the Rio 2016 Organising committee.

Some really interesting questions were raised to each of three bid-city committees, but for canoeing in particular the most powerful was also directed at Tokyo, something along the lines of; “will you carry out a rigorous inspection of your construction plans if awarded the bid, and how can you guarantee that once implemented these plans will not be changed?”

Clearly the IOC had canoeing in mind as we are piggy-backing off a really heated debate between the ICF and Rio 2016 over the suggested relocation of the canoe slalom competitions to Ana Sátila's training camp, Foz do Iguazu, over 700 miles away towards the Paraguayan border. This would marginalise canoe spectatorship and make the event less accessible to visitors. It needs the global spotlight in the heart of Rio, particularly if we are to save canoeing's place for future games after 2020.

So what do we have to look forward to? In truth, a lot!

a) The Japanese paddlers at this week's slalom World Championship in Prague will get more attention than ever before from the media, whether or not the same athletes will compete in 7 years is another question but for the moment they will have 15-minutes of fame. They will have to get used to being in the limelight.

b) There will now be investment in Japanese canoe sport (talent identification schemes, sponsorship, coach-education) in Japan and throughout Asia, thus meeting one of the ICF's goals to encourage development of canoesport in under-represented nations.

c) Now having the Olympics on the horizon, will we see a surge in youngsters joining clubs and lot more participants, not only Japanese but from neighbouring Asian countries, at the Junior & U23 World Championships in sprint and slalom. In the next two years many more new faces should appear in World Cup line ups.

d) Current Japanese paddlers will become role-models to the youth, particularly in Tokyo, but also there will an increased pressure on them to perform now the world is watching, watch out other continents! One thing that is sure that the level of performance of Asian paddlers will soar.

e) A future Japanese medallist at the 2020 Olympics? Sportscene's slalom expert John Gregory tweeted on Saturday night: “Japan's highest place finish in canoe slalom was K1W Yuriko Takeshita 4th place in Beijing 2008 Olympics.”

 Japan's Yuriko Takeshita in K1W at World Cup 1 Cardiff, photo by Adriana Castro

e) The ICF will need to start booking their flights as they will be off to Tokyo regularly to track the progress of construction of the Sea Forest Waterway, the location for our sprint events; a runway cut off from the coast right in the heart of the city centre and 8km from the Olympic village, and the down-town Kasai Slalom Course walking distance from the media centre.

As for other important decisions made, Sunday's IOC Committee selected from wrestling (American, Iranian and Russian favourite), squash (European prized-choice) and a joint baseball-softball bid (highly popular in Japan and in the USA) for inclusion in the 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games.

No shadow of a doubt here with 48 votes, the favourite, wrestling, was given the green light, winning in the first round over baseball's 24 votes and squash's close 22. Despite being originally withdrawn from the Olympic program and being reprimanded for conduct by the IOC prior to Saturday's Session, wrestling is back in after an internal shake up of its administration, rules and categories.

This demonstrates that even core sports can be jettisoned out of the Games; canoeing still needs to be on its guard addressing the contested issues in our sport including the ratio of male to female events and inclusion of women's canoeing. Incidentally, squash, this afternoon, has got right back on the horse announcing that it would continue to apply for future Olympic conclusion, baseball's intentions are not yet public.

Only today (Tuesday) has Thomas Bach of Germany been elected as the ninth President of the IOC following two not-so-close rounds of voting. Bach, previously IOC Vice-President, was the internal candidate chosen over Sergey Bubka (UKR), Richard Carrion (PUR), Ser Miang Ng (SIN), Denis Oswald (SUI, President of the International Rowing Federation) and Ching-Kuo Wu (TPE).

All in all, the exciting last few days of conference have changed the face of global Olympic sport for the time-being, even though the results were somewhat predictable.

Links

www.olympic.org/news

Sportscene's coverage of Saturday night's city selection here on @nickhdg: