Bern organisers “stunned” by Olympic criticism

Kägi accused the Bern bid's organisers of inactivity Keystone Archive

The organisers of Bern's bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics have told swissinfo of their astonishment at being criticised by Swiss Olympic president Walter Kägi.

At a press conference in Lausanne on Tuesday, Kägi accused the Bern-Montreux campaign of being inactive since winning national approval for the project last month.

“If I had been responsible for this bid I would have been doubling my efforts since winning the approval of the sports parliament (in a vote on September 5),” Kägi said. “But unfortunately it seems as if the momentum has now been lost.”

Speaking to swissinfo shortly after hearing Kägi’s comments, Bern-Montreux 2010 project leader Iris Huggler insisted that the Swiss Olympic president had got his facts wrong.

Very unhappy

“We are stunned by what he has said, and very unhappy too,” Huggler said. “What makes it all the more surprising is that we had a meeting only on Monday which Swiss Olympic director Marco Blatter attended.

“We think that Blatter failed to tell Kägi about this meeting, otherwise he’d have known how busy we have been this past month.”

Huggler said that her colleagues had mainly been working on the organisational structure of the Bern-Montreux bid, and would be presenting the outcome of their labours to the Swiss media within the next two days. She added that a press release had already been scheduled before Kägi made his comments.

Financial difficulties

As well as reminding the Bern-Montreux organisers that “time is pressing” ahead of February’s deadline for presenting the bid to the International Olympic Committee, Kägi warned that Swiss Olympic may have to reckon on some serious financial difficulties in the months ahead.

Kägi told Tuesday’s press conference he was concerned about the effects of a new revised lottery for the French-speaking part of Switzerland, which he fears would impact upon the support which Swiss Olympic receives from the national lottery.

“I am of course in favour of a single national lottery,” Kägi added, “because at the moment it covers more than 80 per cent of our budget.”

With the troubled Swissair also providing some SFr 5.5 million of Swiss Olympic’s annual budget, the continued support of the national lottery is seen as vital to the association’s financial well-being.

by Mark Ledsom with agencies