BAVARIAN voters have turned down plans for Munich to bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics, in an embarrassing setback for newly elected International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach of Germany.
Early results from Sunday’s ballot gave the opponents of the Olympics a majority.
Olympic planners needed to have a majority “yes” vote in all four communities that went to the polls and which were planned as the hubs of the games, including the Bavarian capital Munich itself and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the planned site for the glamorous Alpine events.
“The vote is not a signal against the sport, but against the non-transparency and the greed for profit of the IOC,” said Ludwig Hartmann, a Greens party lawmaker and a leader of the NOlympia movement that led the campaign against the bid.
“I think all possible Olympic bids in Germany are now out of question. The IOC has to change first. It’s not the venues that have to adapt to the IOC, but the other way around,” Mr Hartmann said.
Opponents of the Olympics won a majority in in all four communities, meaning the Olympic project won’t go ahead. Leading sports figures have been campaigning strongly for the bid but the project failed to get the approval of taxpayers. A total of 1.3 million people — 1 million alone in Munich — were eligible to vote in the ballot.
