German Olympic/Paralympic Bid Murmurs

(ATR) German political leaders keep pressing forward with ideas to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Armin Laschet will meet IOC President Thomas Bach March 8 in Lausanne. Laschet and Michael Mronz, the founder of the Rhein-Ruhr City 2032 campaign will update the IOC president on the plans.

In an article in Der Spiegel, Laschet praised the advantages of a North Rhine-Westphalian bid, especially in terms of sustainability.

Laschet drew attention to the fact that 90 percent of the sports venues already existed. Consequently, one could "live the sustainability that the IOC has formulated as a goal for the future", Laschet said.

The plan for the bid in northwest Germany has been in development for several years. The proposal covers 14 municipalities in the region.

After a string of unsuccessful bid attempts, the DOSB, the German Olympic Sports Confederation has so far kept a low profile on the subject of the 2032 Olympic Games. The NOC says it will decide in 2020 whether to venture back into the Olympic race.

The last Summer Games in Germany took place in Munich in 1972. Hamburg's bid for 2024, which had initially prevailed in the national decision against Berlin, was scuttled by a referendum in 2015.

Berlin 2036 Floated

Berlin sports senator Andreas Geisel is raising the possibility of a bid from Berlin for the 2036 Olympics.

But he says such a bid would have to be part of a national effort to host the games. Geisel has also said that Poland could be brought into the campaign as a way to share hosting the Olympics. He suggested Warsaw as a co-bidder.

Berlin bid for the 2000 Games but did not make the final round of the IOC selection. The capital city tried to become the German bid for2024, but Hamburg was selected instead by the DOSB.

The 2036 Olympics will come in the Centennial year of the 1936 Games in Berlin. Remembered as an Olympics used by Adolf Hitler to promote the supremacy of his dictatorship, Geisel says a 2036 Games would portray Germany as a fully democratic nation.

Caution is the word however, from Kaweh Niroomand, Vice President of the German Sports Federation and Brandenburg State Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke.

"Many points that are at stake, whether in urban development, mobility or integration, need to be addressed first," Niroomand told the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost.

Woidke, leader of the state government that includes Berlin, says a new bid for the Olympics will need positive support of the population of both Berlin and the state of Brandenburg.

"Therefore, there should only be an application if the citizens participate and Brandenburg is included, because it would also be strongly affected," Woidke told the newspaper Märkische Oderzeitung.

Niroomand says that the DOSB wants to avoid a national competition to select the next Olympic bid from Germany.

"The topic is very sensitive. We cannot enforce games against the will of the population. Everyone now knows that it makes no sense to race cities or regions against each other," Niroomand says about a possible new selection process.

Under the current IOC timetable, the 2036 Olympic host won't be selected until 2029.

Reported from Cologne by Heinz Peter Kreuzer.