The candidacy of the French Alps to organize the Winter Olympics in 2030 took an important step on Wednesday, at the expense of Switzerland and Sweden, by entering into a “targeted dialogue” alone with the IOC, which will designate the host next year, announced a committee official. By this decision of the IOC Executive Board meeting in Paris, France goes from “interested party” to “expected host” of the competition, even though Paris will already host the Summer Olympics in eight months.
The French Alps, which launched their candidacy last summer at the same time as Switzerland – Sweden having been in the running since February – must now go through several months of detailed evaluation of their file, from the map of sites to the heritage planned, through environmental impact, financing and political support.
A project that extends from Nice to Grand Bornand
The project, which ensures that it is based on 95% of existing sites, extends from Nice to Grand Bornand, nearly 500 km apart, with an alpine ski center on the sites of Courchevel-Méribel and Val d’Isère, the cross-country skiing in La Clusaz, and an Olympic village based in Nice, as are the skating events. If the IOC executive judges the French guarantees sufficient, it will recommend its designation as host of the 2030 Olympics during a session next year – which will not be that of Paris in July just before the 2024 Olympics, and must therefore be summoned outside France.
Conversely, if the French file is considered disappointing, the Olympic body can refer the candidacy to “permanent dialogue”, that is to say restart the procedure from scratch, a hypothesis however unlikely in less than seven years. of the competition.
This new procedure, which turns its back on the traditional votes followed around the world to decide between candidates, has only been used once, to award the 2032 Olympic Games to the Australian city of Brisbane in 2021. It aims to drastically reduce application costs – by 80%, according to the IOC -, to avoid the public slap of a negative vote for losers, and to maintain a permanent pool of potential candidates: Sweden, already a candidate for the Olympics -2026 allocated to Milan-Cortina, and Switzerland, also interested in the 2034 edition, are thus invited to further work on their files.