What’s next with the German Olympic bid

If he longs for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Germany, he needs a high dose of confidence – and stamina. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently announced that it will not choose the host of the 2036 Summer Games soon, but in 2029. Whether applicants will be pre-selected in previous years, i.e. whether, as has been suspected for some time, a region like the Middle East will be preferred, is uncertain, like so many things. At least publicly.

The timetable for the national preliminary round on September 26th of this year is now somewhat clearer. Then an extraordinary general meeting of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) in Baden-Baden will choose the German candidate who will take part in the election campaign at the IOC for the Games in 2036, 2040 or 2044. Since Hamburg’s no vote at the end of May, only Berlin, “KölnRheinRuhr” and Munich are still up for election. And the DOSB has now clarified a few questions about the course of this freestyle, after debates that also demanded stamina from those involved – although these clarifications could even trigger further debates.

The DOSB is currently not commenting on many details publicly, although it had promised transparency and clear communication. At an internal workshop this week, he specified answers to the question of which delegates are actually allowed to vote in the national Olympic competition. The crux of the matter is that the DOSB statutes provide paragraphs that allow all DOSB members to select an Olympic candidate. This was also the case with the last free election in March 2015. At that time, the members were only able to approve one candidate selected by the executive committee: Hamburg. Many leading Olympic associations now insist that, strictly speaking, they alone have such a choice.

And paragraph 16 of the DOSB statutes actually allows these leading associations alone to vote in “matters relating to the Olympic Games”. The IOC Charter prescribes a similar passage for such national decisions. Accordingly, only 42 German professional associations whose sports are represented in the Olympic program are entitled to vote in Baden-Baden. In addition, there are only the so-called personal members of the DOSB and the Presidium.

Above all, the second important faction in the DOSB leaves this out: the 16 state sports associations that represent popular sports and that have mobilized people for the games in the applicant regions in recent months. The 28 non-Olympic leading associations in the DOSB are also not allowed to vote – including the German Disabled Sports Association, which is responsible for the Paralympics – as well as 17 associations with special tasks, from the university sports association to the association for nudist culture.

There is a clear consensus in organized sport that the latter may not be the first addressee when it comes to Olympic issues. Some state sports associations – mainly those that are not directly linked to the three applicants – are still angry about their exclusion to this day, especially since paragraph 16 in older DOSB versions left room for other interpretations. This is also why the DOSB recently commissioned a report. However, upon request, the DOSB does not want to say which law firm wrote this and to whom it was recently presented. He simply states that all member organizations can view the report upon request and have been informed that paragraph 16 is relevant.

Another aspect that recently required discussion: The DOSB statutes stipulate that resolutions are generally made “with a simple majority of the votes cast”. A low simple majority would have been enough for a candidate in a competitive first round on September 26th, which would not have sent a winner into the international race with tailwind. According to reports, an absolute majority is therefore necessary. If no one achieves this in round one, the candidate with the fewest votes would be eliminated. In round two, one person would definitely get an absolute majority (the first one was Bild reported about it).

Some voting members could be perceived as biased

Will it even come to that? This is one of many open questions. Because if the DOSB has its way, the professional associations should follow the recommendation of an evaluation commission when making their election. This will in turn base its recommendation on an evaluation matrix that will screen all applicants and be filled out by the DOSB and the Olympic professional associations by autumn. That’s how Otto Fricke, the CEO of the DOSB, outlined it on NDR at least a month ago.

According to SZ information, the Olympic associations were informed on Thursday that this recommendation could be much more diffuse than expected. This could mean that the evaluation commission does not provide a specific points ranking, but instead gives each candidate a rating such as “very good” or “satisfactory”, depending on which point corridor they have achieved in the matrix. Some people involved don’t think it’s out of the question that even the voters won’t receive details from the evaluation matrix or even a voting recommendation in the end. That would raise the question of why a convoluted process that was also intended to create more public transparency was necessary. When asked, the DOSB writes that it communicates about the “ongoing evaluation process exclusively with the member organizations involved”.

In the end, every vote could count in Baden-Baden – which in turn could lead to further, well, exciting constellations. In addition to the 42 specialist associations, each of which has three votes, 18 personal members and members of the DOSB executive board are also allowed to take part with one vote each. And some of these members could be perceived as biased. DOSB Vice President Jens-Peter Nettekoven, for example, sits for the CDU in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, as a party colleague of Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst, who is massively drumming up support for the Rhine-Ruhr application (like Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder for Munich).

Things get even more difficult with some personal members, who are “committed sports personalities” who the DOSB has appointed to its circle. Among them is professional soccer player Leon Goretzka, who has been employed by FC Bayern for the past eight seasons and won Olympic silver with the German team in 2016. With Goretzka, in addition to any sympathy for his long-standing place of work in Munich, one can also claim his Bochum origins. If he votes.

When DOSB board member Otto Fricke was asked about possible bias almost two months ago, he said: “If there is suspicion of concrete personal advantages,” this will be discussed. When exactly and by whom? When asked, the DOSB also left this open.