With less than a month to go before the start of the Tokyo Games, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee now believes that the top priority for the host country is ensuring the safety of athletes coming from all over the world, rather than the number of gold medals its national team may win.
Yasuhiro Yamashita has said Japan's target of a record 30 gold medals, up from 12 in the previous Olympics, is no longer significant given that the goal was set more than a year before the coronavirus swept across the world and the games will be held under a host of unprecedented challenges.
"If I'm asked whether it's important to achieve 30 (gold medals), I want to clearly say 'no,'" Yamashita said at a press conference in Tokyo on Monday.