Yes, they would have liked to have had the Olympic Games in Munich, the Winter Games. But: In 2018, the Lords of the Rings preferred South Korean Pyeongchang – and in 2022 the population rejected an application from the city and its partner communities from the outset. While the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) is still cautiously dreaming of the largest sports festival in the world, Munich is now hosting “mini Olympics” from this Thursday.
50 years after the Summer Olympics, Bavaria’s state capital is the venue for the European Championships. It is the second edition of this multi-EM – the premiere was in Glasgow and Berlin in 2018. “It fits together wonderfully: a multi-sport event 50 years after the Olympic Games,” emphasizes Marion Schöne, head of the Olympic Park and the organizing committee of the “EC”, in an interview with “SID”.
It wasn’t easy to get hold of the biggest sports festival in Germany since the summer games in 1972. According to Schöne, it was “a tough affair”. Not least because of the financing, but also because there were concerns from the Ministry of the Interior, the DOSB and associations. “First it was said that we should come back in a few years,” says Schöne, “but then the 50-year-old would have been over. In the end, everyone fought their way through.”
Schöne wants to “create trust”
In fact, with an expected 4700 participants and 177 decisions in nine Olympic summer sports, this “mini-Olympic” is larger than the Winter Olympics: in Beijing, which anticipated the dream of Munich as the first host of summer and winter Olympics, almost 2900 athletes took part in 109 competitions. The costs of the “EC” in Munich of 100 million euros are shared by the federal government, the state of Bavaria and the city.
A signal should also go out from Munich, especially to the Olympic-skeptical or rather IOC-skeptical German population. “You have to create trust, and that has to be regained first, and that’s also a bit of our mission,” says Schöne: “We’re trying to show that major sporting events are possible with the support of the population, that they are sustainable, that they are positive in the long term keep in remembrance.”
EC without swimming
Munich puts in a lot of effort, among other things with a supporting program that would be worthy of the Olympic Games. The hosts can score points when it comes to sustainability: with the Olympic Park as the center, the sports facilities are used from 1972 – with one exception: beach volleyball and climbing take place on the Königsplatz in the city center, a spectacular ambience. The events there are also popular with the public.
The interest in buying tickets could of course be greater. The people of Munich want to get rid of a total of 450,000 tickets, advance sales have only been going reasonably well for the last two weeks. Perhaps also because, in contrast to the “EC” premiere four years ago, swimming is not on the program this time: The renovated Olympic swimming pool cannot offer the prescribed ten lanes, the construction of a temporary facility would have exceeded the costs.
A million viewers should come
It would also be of little help if the long jump Olympic champion and world champion Malaika Mihamo, who was recently infected with Corona, had to cancel. After all, the weather is supposed to be good, which is the best prerequisite for visitors to the Olympic Park to follow the BMX and mountain bike cycling competitions or the triathlon decisions for free. Overall, the “EC” should attract a million viewers.
If Schöne has her way, the “Mini-Olympics” in Munich would also be an incentive to try again with an application for the (Winter) Olympic Games. “For me and many others who are active in sports, that would certainly be a big dream,” she says. And “if the support of the population is there, if you wear it together like at the European Championships, we have a good chance of getting the Olympic Games here again”.