Olympia:”Particularly interested in re-election”: Freitag criticizes Bach and IOC

Dagmar Freitag, chairwoman of the sports committee in the German Bundestag, has sharply criticized the International Olympic Committee and its president Thomas Bach, but is nevertheless open to a German bid for the Olympic Games.

“My personal opinion is that Thomas Bach is primarily interested in being re-elected. He is not interested in reviving and reforming the IOC and thus also the Olympic idea in a direction that is even remotely in line with the basic idea of a fair and peaceful competition between young people,”said Freitag at a discussion forum of the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research (IBMP) in Nuremberg led by doping expert Fritz Sörgel on Saturday.

The SPD politician spoke of “small reforms” at the IOC, which arose under pressure to ensure that the bidders were not present at the Winter Olympics in particular, but I have little illusions that things will improve in the near future at the crucial point, namely that fair competitions will take place in the sense of clean athletes,”said Freitag and also criticised the German Olympic Sports Association (DOSB).

“As long as national associations such as the DOSB do not position themselves more clearly in their criticism and instead only support the IOC in its stance – from where, if not from there, changes are to be initiated,”said Freitag.

Basically, she has a positive attitude towards the idea of hosting the Olympic Games in Germany,”because I love sport”, said Freitag:”There are so many German athletes who say that the Olympic Games are something great, but the Olympic Games in their own country are the greatest. This fact alone is reason enough for us not to ignore this matter in principle.”

However, she is convinced that an application would mean “very, very hard work” for the DOSB, the applicant city or region and also for our society, which has to carry and accept an application. And that’s not where we are right now. The IOC will not be able to avoid improving reforms and transparency.”