Michael Mronz first grabbed his backpack and disappeared behind the partition on the stage. It almost seemed as if the sports manager wanted to avoid the meeting chair’s appeal for a joint photo of the board and presidium. He could actually have run triumphantly into the middle. Because at the general meeting of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), everything around the most important item on the agenda went exactly in the spirit of the IOC, of which Mronz has been a member since October 2023 and whose interests he has been representing in Germany ever since.
On Saturday, the DOSB in Saarbrücken formally decided on the next step towards an Olympic bid. After a unanimous vote by the delegates, the German sports umbrella organization wants to submit a request to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to enter into “continuous dialogue”; “Continuous dialogue”, that is IOC-speak for the first stage in the rather non-transparent awarding process for the Olympic Games, which the rings organization set up a few years ago. Translated, this only means that German sport now wants to have a non-binding exchange with the IOC.
Saturday’s decision is actually a delay in the German application process. It was actually planned that a concrete concept would already be adopted in Saarbrücken. This has now been postponed and will only take place in a year. And at the same time, the DOSB erased many months of work.
Because he has also said goodbye to the idea that had been proclaimed for almost two years of developing a candidacy consisting of at least two cities. Instead, the DOSB is now adopting a “One Village” concept, in which the most important requirement is that as many athletes as possible can live in an Olympic Village. According to DOSB President Thomas Weikert on stage, we learned from “informal conversations” that this was simply better received by the IOC; Among other things, he himself later clarified that he heard this directly from the outgoing IOC boss Thomas Bach.
The chances are still poor, the year 2044 is often mentioned in the room
But in Saarbrücken it was not only clear to German sport how important it is for them to follow the line of the IOC, but also to politics. Shortly before the meeting, IOC President Thomas Bach in an interview with the FAZ – remarkably, not in the sports section, but as part of the legal supplement “FAZ Objection” – massively criticized the German federal government. He said that it “currently lacks respect for the political neutrality of the Olympic Games”; and the government violated this neutrality by denying Russian athletes entry to sporting events in Germany.
Now it is not easy to find too many sporting events in which entry was specifically refused. But the Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser (SPD), who is responsible for sport, rushed to clarify a few things in Saarbrücken. Of course, German politics recognizes “the autonomy of sport”. And by the way, there are no entry bans and never have been – that sounded different from her house a while ago. DOSB boss Weikert saw this as a good sign and openly admitted that Bach’s statement had previously been helpful. And the IOC happily announced: “The IOC takes note of the federal government’s about-face announced in the Interior Minister’s speech to the DOSB general meeting and welcomes this step.”
Now the German chances of winning the Olympics in the near future remain very poor. In terms of international sports policy realities, nothing will happen before 2040, and it was noticeable that the keyword “2044” was already mentioned in several articles in Saarbrücken. And whether the population will vote yes this time, unlike in the previous two attempts, will only be seen in the first half of 2026 at the earliest. But regardless of this, after Saturday’s decision, a huge number of questions are once again unclear about the further internal process.
Four concepts are now specified
First of all, the DOSB must enter into “continuous dialogue”. This is not something he can decide unilaterally, he can only request it – and then the IOC will act on it. But for now it’s not even clear when exactly this proposal will come. The resolution states that it should happen during 2025 and “as far as the political framework allows.” First of all, a new IOC president should be elected (happening in March) and a new German federal government should be in place (probably not happening until April at the earliest, and possibly later depending on the outcome of the federal election).
But regardless of this, interested cities should now refine their application ideas. The DOSB administration is therefore continuing to pursue various approaches. This was not explicitly stated at the meeting, but as things stand, four concepts are in the running: Berlin and Munich each as a solo application with a few connected satellite locations; the Rhine/Ruhr bid for Düsseldorf; and an application in which Hamburg is at the center, but given the sports facility situation, it is already clear that it would not be possible without Berlin and the question would therefore be how the “One Village concept” could be meaningfully implemented. Leipzig, on the other hand, would only be considered as a junior partner to Berlin.
The cities are now supposed to fill out a variety of “application criteria” by the end of April; What exactly they look like has not yet been publicly communicated, nor has it been revealed which criterion counts how much in the end. But the combination of these two topics results in one of many new problems: the consequence is that the cities have to think about precise information before they know what exactly is actually required in the “continuous dialogue”.
The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder sets the basic tone for the dispute
This is likely to exacerbate animosity between the interested cities. Since they had to say goodbye to the fact that many of them would somehow be considered together in a “Germany bid”, they have become even more rivals. And it is all the more important that the IOC and DOSB executive board member Mronz himself initiated the Rhine/Ruhr project a few years ago. The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder set the basic tone before the event: It could harm everyone if one were to enter into such a “battle”, he told ARD. A process in which there is only “the slightest whiff of some kind of deal or some kind of gimmick” would be “a very bad start”. The head of the North Rhine-Westphalian sports association, Stefan Klett, immediately countered that Söder’s behavior was “impossible”.
However, it is not just the cities that fundamentally dislike something. There is also a lot of dissatisfaction among the leading Olympic associations. Basketball boss Ingo Weiss complained behind closed doors in Saarbrücken that the top associations were being involved far too little; Gymnastics President Alfons Hölzl even brought the topic into the plenary hall and used the opportunity to emphatically refer to paragraph 16 of the statutes. It says: Only the leading Olympic associations are allowed to vote on “matters relating to the Olympic Games” – but not the state sports associations, which are considered the primary lobbyists for the respective cities and regions.
Despite all this, an application is now expected to be pushed forward in the next few months. The DOSB leadership wants to put “at least” one concept up for vote at the general meeting in December 2025.
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