People should not be excluded from international competitions because of political differences, said two-time Olympic champion figure skater Katharina Witt in an interview with Die Welt. We need to reach out to each other and seek human contact, otherwise people will have walls in their heads, like during the Cold War. In this regard, as ambassador of the Special Olympics World Games, she invited the Russians and Belarusians to the start in Berlin.
Russian and Belarusian athletes should be allowed to participate in international competitions, said two-time Olympic figure skating champion Katharina Witt in an interview with Die Welt. She agreed with the position of the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach, that under certain conditions they can come to the events as neutral athletes.
“Art, culture and especially sports have always brought people together,” she emphasized. – We speak the same language, which can be understood without dictionaries!” The former athlete and current Special Olympics World Games ambassador is convinced that denying Russians and Belarusians with disabilities the right to participate in the upcoming Games in Berlin is wrong because of political differences.
She explained this position by her experience of playing for the German Democratic Republic (GDR). She remembers when athletes from the former GDR and the Soviet Union, the United States, Canada, France and the Federal Republic of Germany sat together after the competition and each time wondered why politicians could not get along with each other the way athletes do with each other. It’s important, she said, to reach out to each other and seek human contact, or else in the long run “people will have walls in their heads.”
During the Cold War, Witt constantly feared that, because of political circumstances, she would no longer be able to see her fellow athletes from other countries. No one then thought that the Berlin Wall would one day fall and the situation in the east would become less tense. Now the German capital will host the Special Olympics World Games, making it the largest multidisciplinary sporting event in German history since the 1972 Munich Summer Games.
“We Germans like, without thinking long, to speak out against something, to criticize, to challenge, or to be clever, as if we know more than the rest of the world. So let’s prove it to the world and set an exemplary example of the Olympic idea. If we are as quick to focus on something as positive as the Olympics, it will benefit our society. If anyone can organize them perfectly, it’s us – that’s my firm belief,” concludes Witt.
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