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  The World from Berlin: 'A Generous Portion of Ignorance' in Sochi Choice

The World from Berlin 'A Generous Portion of Ignorance' in Sochi Choice

On Thursday, the International Olympic Committee announced that Russia had won hosting rights for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The decision has proved less than popular. On Friday, German commentators vent their collective spleen.

AP

The Russians were happy with the IOC's Thursday decision. Few others were.

The shock value was high -- many had expected the South Korean town of Pyeongchang to win. But when the ballots were counted after the second round of voting in Guatemala City, the Russians had pulled through.

In some respects it seems only fair: Russia has won more winter medals than any other country in the world, but has never hosted a Winter Olympics since the competition started in 1924.

But it didn't take long for the pundits to catch up. Up to $12 billion will have to be forked out to bring Sochi's infrastructure up to international standards. Entire apartment blocks in the city of 330,000 don't have electricity or gas. There is a hotel shortage and few sporting venues. Almost everything will have to be built from scratch. Indeed, the amount of money Russia plans to invest in the 2014 Olympics is higher than the country's entire budget for education, health and family policy combined.

There are also questions about human rights and President Vladimir Putin's commitment to democracy -- and whether handing him the Olympic Games is sending the wrong signal. There's the growing gap between rich and poor to consider. And major questions about the effect on the Caucasus Mountains environment.

In short, few people have anything positive to say about the decision. Commentators writing in the German dailies on Friday are no different.

Conservative daily Die Welt writes:

"Olympia 2014 perfectly illustrates the alliance between power and capital in Russia. It is taken for granted that Gazprom will build ski lifts while oligarchs try to outbid each other in pledging money for the games just to please the president. The case of Sochi is proof that the Kremlin has control of business in Russia."

"For Putin, hosting the Olympics is also a triumph because his autocratic style of rule thereby gains international approval…. Putin's heavy involvement (in Sochi's candidacy) makes one thing clear: He sees his Kremlin team as still being in power in 2014."

The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung is scathing in its critique on Friday:

"The 'managed democrats' from Russia have made a pact with the guided lobbyists from the International Olympic Committee to crown the summer sun paradise of Sochi as an Olympic winter sports metropolis. A generous portion of ignorance is necessary to make such a decision."

"The Olympic gerontocracy gathered in Guatemala City decided to ignore their very own evaluating committee which had placed Sochi behind other applicants such as Salzburg and the South Korean town of Pyeongchang. The IOC ignored the concerns of environmentalists who are rightly concerned about the over-exploitation of the Caucasus. The Olympic family clearly doesn't care that Russia's President Vladimir Putin, the one who controls Russia's so-called managed democracy, is strengthened by their decision."

"In the future, the International Olympic Committee should make things easier and skip the complicated voting and evaluation procedures and simply choose from the very beginning the candidate which offers the most money or promises the highest profits. Seldom have petrodollars been so valuable as during the days of the IOC's 119th session. And the winner is: Gazprom."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"The 'Gazprom Games' are coming. That the state-owned oil and gas concern will become a sponsor of the International Olympic Committee likely played a decisive role in the decision. The result leaves an extremely bitter aftertaste. As does the fact that Vladimir Putin can now decorate his presidency with the Olympic Games and leverage the Olympics for domestic policy aims."

"But even more questionable is the behavior of the IOC. The keepers of the Olympic ideal still act as though there were objective criteria governing the awarding of the games. But the criteria haven't played a role for a long time: What began as a contest among applicant cities turned into a crude auction in Guatemala City."

Germany's other financial daily Handelsblatt looks at the massive amounts of money that will now be invested in Sochi:

"The residents of Sochi, a majority of whom were against the games for fear of having their property requisitioned, will now have to suffer under the ruthlessness typical of Russia's upper classes just as much as nature will. The local nature reserves in untouched valleys will fall victim to the bulldozers."

"Politically, the Kremlin is basking in the glory of the Sochi victory: Moscow is choosing to interpret the Olympic Committee's decision as validation of Russia's new role in the world. It is the recognition of growing economic possibilities of Russia, gushed Putin. And the decision is, in fact, a political one: The competition for medals was for decades the civilized face of the Cold War. Today, the granting of the games to Sochi cements the fragile conditions in the country."

-- Charles Hawley, 2:00 p.m. CET

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