BERLIN: Bavarian capital Munich, which hosted the 1972 Summer Olympics, will make a bid to stage the Winter Games half a century later in 2022, the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) said yesterday.
Munich, which failed to land the 2018 Olympics after being comfortably beaten by South Korea’s Pyeongchang, will have to wait for a November 10 referendum before formally announcing a candidacy with the International Olympic Committee by the November 14 deadline.
Should Munich be elected in 2015 it would be the first city to have been awarded Summer and Winter Olympics.
“The DOSB is moving ahead with its plans for a bid for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games 2022,” it said in a statement.
“The next step is a referendum in the communities of Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen as well as in the counties of Berchtesgadener Land and Traunstein on November 10, four days before the bid has to be announced to the IOC.”
The previous Munich bid had faced several obstacles from Garmisch residents as well as German environmental groups and the Greens political party over the impact to the Alpine community.
Apart from Kazakhstan’s Almaty, there have not been any other official candidacies yet but more are expected with Poland, Ukraine, Spain, China and Norway among those considering a bid. REUTERS
