… about the countries that do not want to host the Olympic Games:
I find it a little too easy to put pressure on the individual athletes. Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen said ‘no’ to the Olympics, Oslo / Norway said ‘no’, also Innsbruck and Sion in Switzerland. We have to be grateful that the Italians took 2026 (Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, ed.), Otherwise it might have become a country again where people say: “Disaster”.
If we don’t want to be part of the solution, then Olympia should die. We don’t want to offer an alternative, but at the same time we say that China shouldn’t do it. So we’re part of the problem as well, because what option does the IOC have if everyone says ‘no’?
… about the no to the Olympics from Norway:
There are certainly several reasons. One reason is that the IOC made big mistakes. And some journalists in Norway have done well and made the front pages of everything that was not sensible about it.
The media in Norway played a major role in the decision, because it was a tight “no”. For me the wrong decision, because that would have been our opportunity to give some pressure back to the IOC.