European Championships in Munich: No more talk about the Olympics – Sport

2022, just to remind you, was once chosen by the national sports lobby as the year in which Germany was to host the Olympic Games for the first time since 1972. Munich and the surrounding area to host the Winter Games, that was the plan – until the population stopped it in a referendum.

Instead of the winter games, Munich is now hosting nine European Championships from canoeing to track cycling over the next week and a half, bundled under the slogan “European Championships”. And yet the topic of the Olympics is strangely omnipresent.

For some time now, after a total of seven failed attempts, the sports lobby and parts of the political establishment in Germany have been warming up for the next Olympic bid. Now the Multi-EM in Munich should obviously serve as an accelerator. Mini-Olympics, test balloon for the Olympics, signal for the Olympics, sign for the Olympics, tailwind for the Olympics, there aren’t all the formulations floating around. Munich could “contribute to strengthening acceptance and approval for the Olympics in our country,” says Thomas Weikert, President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB). And politics flanked the whole thing with a whopping 100 million euros.

It may be that the next week and a half in Munich will offer a nice sporting event; Incidentally, it’s also possible that they won’t do it – or only halfway. Those responsible have thought of many a neat idea, including beach volleyball on Königsplatz or BMX in the Olympic Park. But ticket sales are weaker than hoped for in many sports, which is only partially surprising when a family of four has to shell out a mid-three-digit sum to follow the track and field athletes’ decathlon in full.

Significantly, the athletes’ spokeswoman Karla Borger also finds words to slow things down

One thing is for sure: the European Championship has about as much to do with the Olympics and the Olympic spirit as the 1972 dachshund Waldi has with a flying elephant. The two events are not only completely different in terms of dimensions, logistics and quality. The big core problems of the German relationship to the games do not affect the “European Championships” at all. It wasn’t because of a lack of beautiful beach or BMX pictures that the Munich Games 2022 were stopped by the local population – just like the Hamburg Games 2024 later or umpteen other applications in Western countries. It’s a deep-seated and well-founded revulsion for the Olympic circus.

It’s about the usual billions in costs that arise around the games; and in times when not only the gas prices are rising to dizzy heights, the taxpayer will ask himself what such an expensive break is all about. It’s also about the unspeakable behavior of that corruption and affair city called International Olympic Committee, which is behind the games. As long as that doesn’t change, it’s going to be difficult with an improved mood for the Olympics and a yes from the population.

It is significant that in the run-up to the Multi-EM just someone like the athlete spokeswoman Karla Borger finds words to slow things down. “Does it have to be new impetus for an Olympic application, or can it first bring a little impetus to the clubs in Germany and encourage more children and young people to do sports again?” she said German press agency: “I think there is more demand at the moment.”

Politicians and sports politicians would do well to simply let the European Championships be European Championships, without Olympic overload and overload. And if the event is successful, it will also be because it has nothing to do with the Olympics and the IOC.