With her clumsy but emotional and breathtaking presentation at the IOC Session in Buenos Aires for Tokyo's 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid in September 2013, Mami Sato became a household name in Japan.
Sato stepped to the podium to lead off Tokyo's bid team, perhaps an unexpected role for a person not trained for giving speeches in English. In fact, she was told she would be the first person to speak to the IOC members just about 10 days before the significant event.
Sato said that the team had serious internal discussions about who should go first, because among the three candidate cities, Istanbul and Madrid being the others, Tokyo wasn't necessarily believed to have been in a favorable situation for winning the bid.