President of Japan's Olympic Committee Dies

10 September 2001

The president of Japan's Olympic Committee has collapsed and died at a hotel in the western Japanese city of Osaka.

Yushiro Yagi collapsed while taking a sauna bath and was taken by ambulance to Osaka National Hospital where he was pronounced dead late Sunday. The exact cause of death was not immediately known. He was 72.

Yagi was in Osaka to attend a ceremony disbanding the Osaka Olympic Bid Committee, which made an uinsuccessful effort to host the 2008 Games. The International Olympic Committee awarded the games to Beijing in July.

Yagi was elected president of the Japan Olympic Committee in 1999 and re-elected in March this year. He led Japan's Olympic delegates at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics and last year's summer Olympics in Sydney.