The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) does not want its idea of another Olympic bid to appear as a dream in the sports bubble. Unlike recently in Leipzig and Hamburg, he was able to have the topic represented by local politicians at the finale of the so-called dialogue forum on Sunday in Berlin.
As hoped, Governing Mayor Kai Wegner said that Berlin was the sports metropolis par excellence in Germany, only the Olympic Games were missing. He firmly reiterated that a bid for 2036, a hundred years after the Games opened by Adolf Hitler in Berlin, would be an outstanding opportunity to present the new Germany to the world.
Unlike the DOSB’s attempts to arouse interest in the application with a talk show on the Internet, where everyone always agreed, there was room for dissent on the podium at the Futurium Berlin on Saturday. One should not try to overwrite history with a better event, said Green MP Klara Schedlich in front of two or three hundred visitors, but rather deal with the past. She also called for transparency and citizen participation, which is likely to be difficult since Berlin’s constitution does not allow the state government to initiate the promised referendum.
Sailing competitions off Tel Aviv?
Stefan Brause, head of the Olympic bidding department at the DOSB, promised the Central Council of Jews something like the right of veto. The association announced that it did not want to raise or lower its thumb in advance. “This debate should be conducted as a society as a whole,” writes the Central Council of Jews: “Both questions of sustainability and dealing with the historical context should play a role. Major events of this kind require acceptance by society as a whole. In our opinion, this debate has not yet taken place sufficiently.”
One indication that the discussion about the Olympics in Germany could take place in a bubble that is not penetrated by the terrible reality of the Middle East war could be calls for the Berlin 2036 sailing competitions to be held on the Mediterranean off Tel Aviv.
