CHEMNITZ (GERMANY), 30 Apr. (dpa/EP) –
Former cyclist and parliamentarian Jens Lehmann, two-time Olympic champion, spoke in favor of the Olympic Games being held in the same fixed venue in all its editions.
“In the Olympic Games, the objective of the participants is certainly not the tourist aspect, but the meeting of athletes from all sports. The place for it is rather secondary, especially for reasons of sustainability,” said the member of the Bundestag Sports Commission.
“It doesn’t have to always be in another country or on another continent,” he said in statements published this Saturday by the newspaper ‘Freie Presse’. Lehmann, a deputy for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), raised his idea at a recent meeting with the president of the International Olympic Committee, also German Thomas Bach.
“Constant new construction would no longer be necessary, so resources and the environment could be conserved,” he said. “On the contrary, with the passage of time the sports venues (of the fixed venue) could acquire their own aura, become sacred and revered places, so to speak, with a very special character, perhaps even overwhelming, for athletes,” said the 1992 and 2000 Olympic champion.
However, the former cyclist does not believe that the project can be implemented before 2040. “Maybe I will live to see the Games always in the same venue in summer and winter, but this approach seems exciting to me for the Olympic future,” he said.
In Ancient Greece, the Games were always held in Olympia, but the modern Olympic Games have been held since 1896 in different parts of the world. Until 2032, different cities are already awarded as venues.