Does anyone in their right mind believe that the madness unleashed by Donald Trump (trade war, border closures, announcements of annexation of Canada, Greenland, etc.), which is destroying the world order, will not have a serious impact on the upcoming mega-events in the United States? On the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and the 2026 Men's FIFA World Cup, which is to be held jointly with Mexico and Canada; on the preparations for the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and many other events in the USA and on other continents?
In times of turmoil and lies, in which the former leader of the so-called free world, the President of the United States of America, openly allies with the mass murderer Vladimir Putin against Europe (to name just one example), and the future of NATO, the EU and other institutions is written in the stars, it is certainly advisable not to spread additional panic – Trump and his deluded followers are doing that every hour.
In Germany, the term “firewall” has been discussed for some time in connection with the AfD, a party with Nazi roots. The question at the heart of the debate is whether democratic parties should work with and form coalitions with the AfD. In international sport, such firewalls have long since been dismantled, if they ever existed at all.
In international sport, the following has always been true, as former FIFA Secretary General Jérôme Valcke once put it:
„I will say something which is crazy, but less democracy is sometimes better for organising a World Cup. When you have a very strong head of state who can decide, as maybe [President Vladimir] Putin can do in 2018 ... that is easier for us organisers than a country such as Germany, where you have to negotiate at different levels.“
Meanwhile, everything has become much worse.
IOC president Thomas Bach's political intuition was not mistaken when he met Donald Trump at the White House in June 2017. “Pray for our world,” Bach is said to have told and written to his confidants afterwards.
Eight years later, this is more urgent than ever. But prayers alone will not help.
There is nothing that can be done with the propaganda of supposedly apolitical sport. Sport has always allied itself with evil of its own free will. This was the case at the 1936 Nazi Olympics, and it is the case with the ingratiation with China, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Now the Olympic movement has to live with Trump transforming the United States into a dictatorship and thus unilaterally changing the terms of business for future mega-events.
Eight years later, on the verge of the end of his term as IOC president and his departure as an IOC member (on June 23, 2025), Thomas Bach has nothing more to say than that Trump is “a sports fan at heart.”
Pathetic. As if it were important (and right).
