Hamburg's Olympic bidders are counting on the international appeal of Kiel Week. This was confirmed on Tuesday at a press conference in Hamburg by Michael Neumann, the Senator for the Interior and Sports of the Hanseatic city. Michael Neumann called Kiel a "strong partner at eye level", which also stands for world-class sailing internationally and is "comparable to Wimbledon in tennis" with regard to other sports. This means that the 121st Kiel Week from 20 to 28 June will be dominated by the German bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games. Kiel's Lord Mayor Ulf Kämpfer promised: "Kiel will promote the German bid with great commitment and major sailing events."
But first, Kieler Woche will once again have to cope with a sporting setback, as many well-known names are missing from the 3500 or so sailors expected to take part in the 121st edition of the world's largest regatta. The sporting bloodletting has reasons for which the people of Kiel are largely not responsible: Many international and national top performers from the Olympic classes had to cancel their participation due to overlapping dates with world and European championships. This also includes Philipp Buhl, Germany's greatest hope for the 2016 Olympic Games, who has to miss out because the Laser Sailing World Championship in Kingston, Canada, begins shortly after Kiel Week and marks the highlight of his season. Buhl has recently won Kiel Week three times in a row and would have been keen to compete for the new prize money at Kiel Week: "I love sailing in Kiel. Also because a home match is always nice. But unfortunately it's not possible this year with the preparation in the world championship area."
In the fight against the unfavourable trend of increasingly overlapping dates and also against the close proximity to the World Cup regatta in the British Olympic area of Weymouth, the Kiel Week organisers have now initiated initial measures. They want to regain the World Cup status they lost three years ago and believe they have a good chance of doing so by 2019 because the conditions that were initially unacceptable for Kiel, such as the exclusion of parallel regattas in other classes and other factors, have changed. They know on the fjord: Individual contracts for World Cup organisers with the International Sailing Federation (Isaf) have now become possible. It is undisputed that Kiel has long set international standards in areas that are also important from the point of view of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), such as medialisation. The organisers also want to take this potential into future negotiations with Isaf.
Kiel also wants to apply to host the World and European Championships itself and is already in talks with Isaf and the class associations in this regard. This could achieve two goals at once: sporting attention for Kiel's sailing activities as an Olympic candidate and more influence on the organisation of the dates. At the same time, the Olympic and international sailors will swap their time slots during the Kiel Week next year in order to optimise their schedules. This is intended to create more space between the World Cup in Weymouth and Kiel Week. In 2016, Kiel Week will begin with the international boat classes and end with a highlight: the medal races in the Olympic disciplines.
The new "KiWo" boss Dirk Ramhorst admitted: "We are facing a challenge this year and have the familiar scheduling conflicts. But we have to get back to the point where there is no way around Kiel as quickly as possible." The leap back - not to the already consistently occupied quantitative, but also to the qualitative top of international regatta sport - should succeed by 2019 at the latest with the prize money already introduced this year, the self-organised world and continental title competitions and thus better scheduling control as well as the World Cup status that is being targeted. By 2018, Hyères and Weymouth had been awarded the contract to host the two European World Cup regattas. In the spotlight of the Olympic bid, the fighting spirit of the Kiel Week organisers has apparently been rekindled.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
