"Human lives have priority above all, even before the games are played." With this and other key messages, IOC President Thomas Bach addressed the international Olympic athlete community today in an open letter. This latest official IOC reaction was preceded by many athlete actions over the weekend. They ranged from boycott announcements by well-known Olympic athletes such as European fencing champion Max Hartung in the current sports studio on Saturday evening to harsh criticism of the IOC's hesitant reaction to the corona pandemic and its drastic effects on the Olympic preparations and qualifications that were canceled in series Appeals to the IOC to urgently postpone the hosting of the 2020 Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee and its President have now explained their approach and announced that they will clarify the staging of the Olympic Games within four weeks. The IOC ruled out a total failure. The postponement, which has not yet been decided, has at least become more likely with the announcement on Sunday.
IOC President Thomas Bach in conversation with Nacra 17 Olympic champion Santi Lange
Kiel Week Sports Director Dirk Ramhorst
At YACHT online, Kiel Week Sports Director Dirk Ramhorst took a clear position on this on Saturday. His arguments and the background to the early postponement of the Kiel Week to September can be read here. Well-known German Olympic sailors had previously spoken out in favor of postponing the Olympic Games, including laser world champion Philipp Buhl from Sonthofen. The 30-year-old keeps himself fit in the Allgäu in the mountains with contactless outdoor sports or on a roller bike and told YACHT online: "If half of the athletes can no longer qualify properly and can no longer train effectively, these are more subtle problems than Event overlaps or media bottlenecks in the event of a postponement. Olympi has a higher mission than just awarding medals. Olympi is supposed to bring the world together, and that is currently hardly possible. That's why I advocate a postponement. " The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) is now asking its athletes for their opinion in order to get an idea of the situation.
Laser world champion Philipp Buhl is calling for the Olympic Games to be postponed
For the international sports umbrella organizations and the national associations as well as the athletes, the wait for the final decision with the latest IOC message has been extended. If the IOC uses the full month, a container load of the national sailors will also be on the ship's route to Enoshimsein. The German Olympic candidates will meet one after the other at the largely closed federal base in Kiel on Monday under the highest hygiene protection measures to prepare boats and material for loading. There is then a maximum of two weeks until the packaged load on the transport order of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) has to be shipped to Japan with the logistics company Schenker in order to arrive there in time for the World Cup regatta in the Olympic area of Enoshim, which will take place in mid-June theory as the final qualification for the Olympic Games in question. "As long as we have no other reliable statement, we have to act like this," DSV sports director Nadine Stegenwalner explains the process, of which it is not yet certain whether it will actually make sense. The action is only one of tens of thousands of examples in all sports and worldwide, which shows that every day of an earlier IOC decision on the hardly avoidable postponement of the Olympic Games would be a win for athletes, associations, DOSB and many other participants.
The Olympic Port of Enoshima
The final word on this earth-shattering question has not yet been spoken in times of crisis. But the one that ends Thomas Bach's open letter: "I wish, and we are all working on it, that the hope expressed by so many athletes, national Olympic committees and international sports federations from all five continents is fulfilled: that on End of this dark tunnel through which we all go together and do not know how long it will be, the Olympic flame will be the light at the end of this tunnel."
Read the letter from IOC President Thomas Bach here.
An impression from the Enoshim 2019 Olympic test regatta. When the next time you can sail there in times of corona pandemic remains open for a maximum of one month
