Hamburg: Olympic supremo Thomas Bach welcomes a German bid for the 2024 or 2028 Summer Games and believes that the bid would have a good chance to succeed.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Bach told German broadcasters NDR at the Youth Olympics in China that an important criteria will be that the candidate cities—Hamburg or Berlin—really want the Games.

“Fact is that a German bid, supported by a vast majority of the population, would be a very, very strong one. It would really have a good chance,” Bach said.

Germany last hosted the Munich Olympics in 1972. Berlin and Leipzig failed with Summer Games bids in recent years.

Munich lost the vote for the 2018 Winter Games to South Korea’s Pyeongchang and a second attempt for 2022 was vetoed via a referendum.

The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) will decide in December whether Hamburg or Berlin will bid for the 2024 or 2028 Games.

Hamburg’s senator for sports, Michael Naumann, has named an Olympic legacy and no debts a key condition for a bid, along with an end to Olympic gigantism.

The local Hamburger Abendblatt has said that 73 per cent of the locals support a bid.

Berlin, which hosted the
1936 Games, sees 86 per cent of the capital’s population calling for more transparency in the bid process, and 76 per cent demanding that the scale of the Games has to depend on the host city—according to an online poll by the governing senate.

Bach said that he would be delighted about Olympics in his home country, but that it will not lead him to violate his strict neutrality as IOC boss.

Bach’s eight-year term runs until 2021 and he could seek re-election for another four years until 2025. The 2024 host city is to be elected in 2017 and the 2028 host in 2021.

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