As far as I can ascertain, 56-year-old Seiko Hashimoto is only the second woman in Olympic history to hold that position.

I like the look and sound of her, just as I did the last woman to take charge of the Games, those in Athens 17 years ago when Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, a wealthy Greek diva, was parachuted in to save Athens 2004 from humiliation.

Seiko, formerly Japan's Olympic Minister is a seven-time Olympian herself, having competed as a cyclist and a speed skater.

Former Games chief Yoshirō Mori, 84, committed figurative hari-kari when he was quoted as saying women talk too much, especially in meetings.

Another octogenarian male leader was initially billed to replace him, but this was also met with protests so it was not without irony when they turned to mother of six - including three stepchildren - Hashimoto, who also significantly doubled as the Japanese Government’s Minister for Women’s Empowerment.

Married to a policeman, she was the first politician in Japan to take maternity leave while in office - something she campaigned for while pregnant - and additionally became the first upper-house lawmaker to give birth while in office.

Like Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, she appears to have a formidable personality to match what is an equally formidable task, with continuing doubts over whether these rescheduled Games can begin on July 23 while COVID-19 continues to hover menacingly in the air.

Despite an determinably upbeat attitude by organisers the odds remain stacked against it with Japan’s vaccination programme delayed because of a lack of supplies, many countries wary of sending teams and the mood of the host nation heavily opposed to staging the Games both on economic and safety grounds.

Rewind to Athens 2004 when the nation which gave birth to the Olympic Movement celebrated with one of the most pleasurable of Games albeit accomplished by the skin of the teeth and minus the odd lick of paint.

In the initial build-up the Greeks certainly had a word for it. Chaos. I am no student of Greek mythology but at the time I did offer the thought that what Greece could do with was another Helen of Troy.

One came in the form of Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, who had won Greece the 2004 Olympics and then came in to rescue them when Athens was warned it faced the danger of having the Games taken away because it was so far behind in its preparations.

I first met her when she was drafted in to lead the Athens Olympic bid and brilliantly out-manoeuvred that crafty old Italian fox Primo Nebiolo to snatch it from under his Roman nose.

I was impressed with her then and even more so when a graceless Greek Government bade their Games-saviour thank you and goodnight only to realise their error when preparations were heading for disaster.

The then International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch had warned that Athens could forfeit the Games if the organisers and the Government did not act quickly.

Mrs A, the right-leaning raven-haired multi-millionairess, lawyer, wife of a shipping magnate, who originally won the bid for the Greek capital had been dumped earlier because her popularity made her a dangerous political opponent for the Government. But she was hastily recalled, and that yellow card soon became a green light.

Tables were thumped and heads banged together by the cigar-puffing Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, who wielded a far meaner handbag than Margaret Thatcher ever did and fought bitterly to head off what would have been the greatest humiliation in the nation's history. "I am a proud Greek and I was determined to see my country change because of the Games,'' she told me at the time.

"I have worked no magic. It has all been done professionally, by hard work, and there is still much more to do. These have been dark days, anxious days, but now we have reached the turning point. This has always been my goal."

There was a time when it was believed she might become Greece’s Foreign Minister which could have led to her ascendancy to the premiership. Instead she elected to become, for a while, proprietor of one of Greece's leading newspapers and later an Ambassador for the Greek state with special responsibility for youth and sport.

These days the 66-year-old keeps her finger on the political pulse and in her book My Greek Drama, the absorbing memoirs of her days as President of Athens 2004, she recalled: "If I was the Olympic 'bitch' at times - and I was - it was because I had no choice. I had to get things done with a dispatch that was not customary in our country."

Angelopoulos-Daskalaki explains that she felt it was imperative for Organising Committee not to overspend. "One message, one inviolable rule, had primacy," she wrote. "Stay on budget! One euro over and they will hang all of us."

It is a message that has an Olympic ring of truth especially in today’s economic climate, even it was all Greek to the Greeks themselves.

"For too long, Greece has been unfairly singled out. Nations around the world run afoul of financial obligations, but we are called to account. People around the world work less hard than Greeks, but we are stereotyped as lazy.

"I know and I have seen a different Greece. The Greece I saw leading up to the Athens Olympics was a Greece that was willing to sacrifice and willing to meet and exceed international standards. Now, a sponsor of students at the Clinton Global Initiative University I've seen first-hand the energy and potential of Greece's young people.

"Inspiring movements and capturing potential requires time, and it requires leadership."

Hopefully Hashimoto will discover a large dollop of the Angelopoulos-Daskalaki Olympic spirit, although even with a belated woman’s touch, the outcome is almost certainly out of her hands.