Hamburg sees Cup as Olympic springboard

HAMBURG, May 29 (Reuters) Hamburg, a city that has had to rise from the ashes at least three times, now has its sights on the Olympic Games, with officials hoping to use the World Cup as a platform for bids in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

Hamburg is Germany's second largest city with a population of 1.7 million and the only one of the 12 World Cup venues that is a sea port.

It will get plenty of international attention during the tournament, after inviting the United States team to set up camp in the city.

That poses obvious security problems but if the operation runs smoothly it could help to convince the German Olympic Committee to give the green light for the long-term Olympic project rather than push Berlin for a single shot at 2016.

Hamburg mayor Ole von Beust made a trip to Turin during the Winter Games to push the bid, which fell at the first hurdle for 2012 when Germany surprisingly chose Leipzig as its bid city.

Whether it is a realistic candidate for the Olympics or not, there is plenty to like about Hamburg, which is situated far in the north of the country, closer to Denmark than it is to Berlin, and has little in common with Bavaria in the south.

It is an affluent place but not a snobbish one and has been a major European trading centre for more than 800 years.

Hamburg officially became a city state in 1770 and is still immensely proud of that status. It is one of the 16 states of Germany and is almost always referred to by officials as The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

GREAT FIRES The city centre is split into the old and new towns, but the latter is a relative term only given that it has been around since the 12th century.

Hamburg was engulfed by great fires in 1284 and 1842. It then suffered the horror of Operation Gomorrah starting in late July 1943, a series of bombing raids that killed more than 40,000 people and forced more than a million to flee.

Most of those deaths came on the night of July 27-28 when the combination of explosives, heavy bombing and the dry weather caused the so-called firestorm.

''Hamburg is perhaps the best example of a city that has recovered from destruction and terror,'' Peter Torry, Britain's ambassador to Germany, said in a speech in Hamburg to mark the 60th anniversary of that bombing.

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