With staying power, the leaders of the sport want to turn the Olympic mood in Germany and start a new attempt for a game application.
“We want and will break new ground in the coming months and do it differently than many attempts in the past,” said Thomas Weikert, President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation, in the Sports Committee of the Bundestag. The DOSB leadership will support another candidacy “out of full conviction”, but wants to avoid the mistakes in the last series of failed attempts.
Olympic bid “not at any price”
“We don’t want the attempt at any price,” asserted Weikert. However, if the DOSB general meeting gives its approval in December, the umbrella organization wants to enter into a broad dialogue with as many social groups as possible. “People have to be taken along and heard. Only then can a process like this be successful,” said the head of the association.
However, Weikert has already written off an application for the next open games, the Winter Olympics 2030. “2030 is too late. Everything is already in the works,” said the DOSB boss. The 2034 Winter Games and the 2036 Summer Games would be considered for a new German start for the Olympics and Paralympics, Weikert added.
Anti-corruption expert Sylvia Schenk warned against hasty attempts to apply. “We are not ready for the Olympics. We urgently need to start training and make a good training plan,” said the head of Transparency International’s sports working group. German sport is “not up to date” and not well positioned internationally. A “crash course in sustainability matters” is needed, and German sport is also “far behind” when it comes to human rights concepts.
So far great skepticism – euphoria in Munich
Weikert countered: “We have a training plan.” He admitted, however, that skepticism about major sporting events is currently deeply rooted in Germany. “The recent games in Beijing and the soccer World Cup in Qatar are not exactly suitable for convincing the critics of major sporting events in Germany,” said the 60-year-old.
The DOSB also does not want to be “distracted by temporary storms of enthusiasm”, as there were recently about the successful multi-EM in Munich. “It would have been easy for the DOSB to ride the wave of enthusiasm,” said Weikert, referring to recent calls for an Olympic bid.
German Olympic applications had recently been unsuccessful seven times, also because the citizens were against it – for example when trying to host the 2022 Winter Games with Munich and the 2024 Summer Games with Hamburg. Michael Mronz, co-founder of the initiative for games on the Rhine and Ruhr, referred to the success of the advertising campaign for the 2006 World Cup: “People made the summer fairy tale.” The Olympics are “a decade-long project with the opportunity to activate necessary investments in sport”.
However, the former top sports official Schenk does not consider the current concepts to be sustainable. “The Olympic Games will look very different than we imagine now,” said the 70-year-old. Only with a “completely new concept of cities and sports facilities” can one be convincing. “Butter has to go with the fish, otherwise it won’t be enough,” said Schenk.
