Photo/Illutration The Olympic rings are set up on a barge in Tokyo's Odaiba waterfront district in January. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Organizers of the Tokyo Olympics agreed to allow a mobile video camera high above the capital’s waterfront area to produce 24-hour live feeds during the sports extravaganza despite concerns over safety and cost, sources said. 

The camera will be set up on a cable more than 60 meters above the Odaiba district, which will be home to the Olympic cauldron as well as many competition venues, the sources said.

Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), responsible for providing iconic images of the Olympic host city and competition coverage to TV stations around the world, plans to install cameras at more than 10 standout locations in Tokyo, including Sensoji temple’s Hozomon gate, Tokyo Skytree and the Imperial Palace’s Nijubashi bridge as well as Odaiba.

OBS, which was established by the International Olympic Committee, obtained permission from the Tokyo metropolitan government to temporarily set up a 60-meter-high tower at Shiokaze Park in Odaiba to secure one end of the cable.

The cable will stretch 1.2 kilometers over the sea to the rooftop of a 100-meter-tall high-rise apartment.

Odaiba, which is battered by strong winds even in normal weather conditions, might experience fierce gusts due to a summer typhoon, leading organizers to initially oppose the plan on safety grounds. The Tokyo Olympics will start July 24.

The organizing committee also balked at shelling out hundreds of millions of yen for the project.

But OBS strongly petitioned the organizers to reconsider.

Though cameras are often set up above stadiums to film competitions, it is rare in Japan to install one on such a large scale in an urban area.

(This article was written by Daisuke Maeda and Shuhei Nomura.)