Olympia, the dream of many athletes, is just around the corner.

It will probably not be a winter fairy tale.

"The situation is excited, but tense," says Johannes Herber, Managing Director of Athletes Germany, with a view to the Winter Games in Beijing, which begin at the end of next week.

Olympic participants would have gone into personal bubbles so as not to endanger their participation with a corona infection.

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

Tobogganists and bobsledders reported a nail-biter on Wednesday before their departure: Just stay negative.

Herber has a good connection to the active.

On Wednesday, he presented his concerns to the new Sports Committee of the German Bundestag, which occasionally met in public and, as a parliamentary institution, learned about everyday concerns.

Only those who can prove a negative corona test will be allowed to enter China and take part in the games.

Some of the athletes, after ten years of preparation and weeks of isolation in a sports bubble, have the justified feeling that they no longer have any influence.

The opponent is invisible.

It's not the only strain on the Olympic team.

Herber complained that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) could not guarantee that participants would not face reprisals from the Chinese hosts if they exercised their right to freedom of expression.

focus on the competition

In this regard, Thomas Weikert, President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), told MPs he took very seriously the threat made by a member of the Chinese Organizing Committee that violating Chinese laws would be sanctioned as well as criticizing the Olympics. He is in contact with the IOC. So far, it has been the case that athletes are allowed to express themselves as long as they comply with the Olympic Charter.

"It should continue to be possible," added the lawyer: "We ask the athletes that they can do it and protect them as far as we can." right” that “these topics” are addressed.

But now it's time for her to focus on what she loves and what she's been training for for so long: the competition.

Off to the tunnel.

Athletes Germany, with President Karla Borger also present in the sports committee, is the voice of those who are becoming more monosyllabic before their big performance at the Olympics.

The club accused the IOC of having put athletes all over the world in an impossible situation with its irresponsible award decision.

"They are in a dilemma because they don't want their sport to cause harm or be linked to human rights violations," says an open letter: "Some dare to openly criticize.

At the same time, the responsibility for the impossible situation in which world sport has been heading for years should not be placed on the shoulders of the athletes.

They were excluded from all allocation and decision-making processes and are affected themselves.

It is therefore unfair that, years later, they should have to pay for the mistakes of the IOC.”

No Chinese government platform

Herber and beach volleyball player Borger wrote to the sports committee about the consequences to be drawn from this: "We see it as a task for politicians to make it unmistakably clear to the IOC and the Olympic movement that they must fulfill their human rights responsibilities and not to repeat situations.

The Chinese regime should not be given a platform or stage to use the images from the games for its propaganda and sports washing purposes."

On the one hand, the athletes' representatives welcomed the fact that high-ranking German politicians are staying away from the games, on the other hand, they thanked the Olympic team and the DOSB's crisis response team for being supported by an Olympic attaché with diplomatic immunity.

State aid is needed far beyond the top-class sport problem.

Weikert spoke for the base when he explained that many of the 90,000 sports clubs in Germany were at a critical point.

Although there are no bans this winter, they are miles away from normality.

Federal, state and sport would have to help.

The DOSB boss made it clear with the word about the cross-sectional task that not only the usual sports promotion, but also the departments of health, family and integration are in demand.

"The best help for mass sport is to allow it and promote it."