Japan Scraps Olympic Stadium Plan Over $2 Billion Price Tag

Photo The 80,000-seat venue would have been bigger than the main stadiums for the last two Summer Games, in London and Beijing. A costly retractable roof was seen by many as an extravagance. Credit Japan Sport Council, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images TOKYO — Three years after Japanese Olympic organizers selected a vast, sleek stadium design by a prominent Iraqi-British architect for the centerpiece venue of the 2020 Summer Games, the government announced on Friday that it would scrap the plan and start over because of spiraling costs.

The decision, announced by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, came in response to growing public anger over the stadium’s estimated cost, which has ballooned…