Steffen Rülke is evasive when asked about his impression of whether Olympic euphoria has actually already been ignited in Hamburg. He would like to answer this with a note: If you are interested in volunteering to work with him and his team on Hamburg’s successful application, please feel free to get in touch.
Perhaps it is asking too much to expect Rülke to assess the mood in Hamburg around four months before the Hamburg referendum on a new Olympic bid. After all, he is partial and is responsible for that the euphoria side should win the vote: As head of the city’s project group, he has been traveling around the city since last fall, from one participation format to the next in order to campaign for a yes vote in the referendum.
The SPD and the Greens have equipped Rülke’s 20-person project team with 18 million euros to do better than a decade ago: In 2015, the coalition that was already in power at the time dreamed of the Olympics before the skeptics ended the plans – for now, as it now turns out – with a victory in the referendum.
It is an area of tension in which Rülke, like the entire Hamburg Olympic bid, finds itself: On the one hand, there needs to be Olympic euphoria in the city in order to get a majority in the referendum on May 31st. Rülke tried to spark this on Tuesday when, when presenting the results of the now completed participation process, he spoke of wanting to “continue on the summer fairy tale of 2006” with the Olympics in Hamburg.
Against renewed doubt
On the other hand, Rülke seems to know this well, he shouldn’t advertise too euphorically – some serious sobriety is important for the city’s Olympic supporters so that they don’t even get so intoxicated by the idea of the Olympics anymore. that the majority of Hamburg residents who are eligible to vote have doubts.
The Hamburg-born Rülke, who previously worked in Berlin as office manager for the then head of the Chancellery Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD) and later as head of the sports department in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, does not always succeed.
As the chief euphorizer, he explained at an information event in November, when asked by the audience about the climate costs of major events such as the Olympics, that Hamburg not only wanted to hold the games in a climate-neutral way – but even in a climate-positive way! He did not provide any further explanation. For comparison: the 2024 Olympics in Paris were responsible for the comparatively few 1.59 million tons of CO2-Equivalents celebrated.
In the hot election campaign period that will begin in the coming weeks, such empty promises are likely to cause a lot of headwind: Rülke’s opponents in the Olympic initiative have now started work and are campaigning for a no vote in the referendum – and are already criticizing the participation process led by Rülke as an “advertising lecture by the Olympic seller with coupled campaign market research”.
However, Rülke seems to have already understood how not to cause offence, at least with trivialities: When it comes to football, he was already known to be an HSV fan, but also had sympathy for FC St. Pauli.