Home International Olympics Summer Olympics: Germany Doesn’t Want A Second Munich

Summer Olympics: Germany Doesn’t Want A Second Munich

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It is likely that Germany will make a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics as the country’s Olympic Committee is doing research to identify which city would be the perfect host because the German committee head doesn’t want a second Munich.

Alfrons Hormann had an interesting phrase describing the research. He doesn’t want a second Munich. But he wasn’t referring to the terrorist attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics where participants lived in Munich. No he instead is worried that the second Munich would be naming it as the German bid city only to see the bid withdrawn because of local opposition.

Hormann seems to be more preoccupied with Munich turning down a chance at hosting the 2022 Winter Games than what happened in 1972. Munich area residents went to the polling booth in 2013 and told German officials loudly that they were uninterested in having the Games in Bavaria. Apparently the unknown cost of hosting the event and the 50th anniversary of the worst massacre in Olympics history weren’t major selling points.

The German Olympic Committee is also considering Berlin and Hamburg.

In case Hormann has forgotten in his haste to not want a “second Munich”, it would actually be a third Munich. Perhaps there should be a brief history lesson putting the 1972 massacre side by side with voters rejecting a scheme to fund the 2022 Winter Olympics. In 1972, a Palestinian terrorist group called Black September invaded the Olympic Village and killed 11 Israelis. The drama played out on international television and probably was the first terrorist attack ever to be brought into living rooms worldwide. The events were stopped for a day but the competition resumed after International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage said the games must go on. In the 42 years since that terrorist attack, the IOC has never officially recognized the events in Munich although on the 40th anniversary there was a small private ceremony remembering the slain Israelis.

Voters in the Munich area merely turned down a chance to fund the 2022 Winter Olympics. There was no tragedy. The German Committee doesn’t want a second Munich. No one else does either if indeed Hormann was referring to the Munich Massacre of 1972.

This article was republished with permission from the author, Evan Weiner. This podcast was originally published on www.sportstalkflorida.com and can be viewed by clicking here.

 

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