The second day of the General Assembly of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Mumbai offered its participants a journey through time right from the start. The most recent edition of the Olympic Games was only twenty months ago, but it was a different world back then: Vladimir Putin had not yet unleashed war against Ukraine, but there was Xi Jinping’s version of the Covid Winter Games in frosty Beijing.
How it was? The Chinese presented their final report in Mumbai. So the games were of course a success story. “President Xi initially ordered green, inclusive, open games,” Qian Zhang reported for the organizers. Then Covid-19 came, and the Chinese version of pandemic sports became the Olympics. So: “Magnificent Games were held in a safe, simplified manner. President Xi personally inspected competition venues, joined the IOC session and welcomed international dignitaries.”
Outstanding, magnificent, extraordinary
The numbers from back then were not to be missed, they are also the numbers from today: 346 million Chinese are now winter sports enthusiasts, including 46 million children. It was outstanding, magnificent, extraordinary, life in the Covid-regulated Olympic village was “easy and happy”. Athletes who, like the Nordic combined athlete Eric Frenzel, had to get to know Chinese quarantine rooms, with peeling wallpaper, tiny, not clean, will probably have different memories to this day.
But such experiences do not occur on the stage of an IOC general assembly. Instead, a little bit of Xi. China’s ruler recently met Thomas Bach, the IOC President, again in Hangzhou at the Asian Games. “China will never stop spreading the Olympic spirit,” Xi Bach promised. The German’s response to the presentation in Mumbai: Ms. Zhang offered a “clear insight into the ingredients for success.”
The report from the Chinese dictatorship contrasted sharply with the look into the future that was subsequently offered to IOC members. Beijing was followed by the report of the hosts of the 2026 Winter Games: Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. The Italians organize their games in a highly decentralized manner, from the Lombard metropolis via Verona to South Tyrol – and also, as has been clear since Monday, beyond the border of the Repubblica Italiana.
No new bobsleigh track for the Olympics in Italy
Because unlike in China, the government in Rome does not have omnipotence. The government would have liked to push through the construction of a new bobsleigh and toboggan run, but the IOC, which is keen not to put any more white elephants in thawing winter sports areas, reluctantly gave the green light. But: The project has been canceled, announced Giovanni Malago, President of the National Olympic Committee (NOC), on Monday. No money, no time, protests from the citizens, the development was clear.
Malago said afterwards that the organizing committee could live with that; it was now a matter of finding a track on which the sledging competitions could take place. The Austrian Karl Stoss immediately brought the track in Innsbruck-Igls, which was about to be renovated, into play as a favorite, the natural ice track in St. Moritz seems too risky, the German track at Königssee can only start women’s races in 2025 at the earliest after it was destroyed by a storm offer. By the end of the year it should be clear where the Italians will move.
Christoph Becker, Mumbai Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 2 A comment from Christoph Becker, Mumbai Published/Updated: Recommendations: 3 Christoph Becker, Mumbai Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 9
It also deals with the task of providing a sufficient number of beds. Simply because the geographical distribution of the games even dwarfs that of the Chinese. Municipalities and cities, regions, autonomous provinces – democracy complicates the Olympic business. On the other hand, in all the promises and exaggerated adjectives that the Italians already use to describe their games, fragments of the discussions that concern European citizens when the Olympics come to their neighborhood still appear.
