In Warsaw, several times in the twentieth century there were initiatives taken to build Olympic infrastructure and apply for the right to host the Summer Olympic Games. For various reasons, all of them failed at a relatively early stage, none even resulting in official application to the International Olympic Committee. The situation was similar in the case of the last - so far - major Olympic initiative in the Polish capital - the concept of the ‘Vistulian Olympic Games Warsaw 2012', which was proposed in 1992 by former fencers and Olympic medallists, and important figures of the Polish public life at the time - Ryszard Parulski and Wojciech Zablocki. However, the event received a great deal of media attention - local and national press (which will be the primary focus of the study), as well as radio and television. Media coverage was inventoried thanks to the private collections of Urszula Parulska - the widow after Ryszard who passed away in 2017. In her collection, it was possible to find several dozens of press materials of various volumes from 1992-1999, relating to the initiative. According to the research conducted in this collection, it was possible to establish that media reactions ranged from relatively enthusiastic to extremely sceptical, and even ironic. Reactions depended to a large extent on the ideological profile of the newspapers - the national and Catholic press was most supportive of the project. Sceptical journalists from the liberal and left-wing press emphasised the economic weakness of Poland and the multitude of more urgent social to be solved . The scepticism of a large part of the media may have played a role in the reluctant reception of the initiative by politicians at the governmental level, which ultimately contributed to Warsaw's failure to submit candidature to the IOC.