Between global warming and reluctance to face costs, do the Winter Olympic Games (OG) have a future? Aware of the challenge, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) knows that it must relax its requirements if it wants to preserve a pool of potential hosts for the coming decades.
Apparently, no reason to worry: on Wednesday, the Olympic body will have three contenders – France, Sweden and Switzerland – to enter into “targeted dialogue” for the organization of the 2030 Olympics, therefore verifying the technical and financial guarantees of the file(s) retained before the official award in 2024.
It is a better candidate than for the 2022 Olympics, won by Beijing against Almaty and marked by enormous investments, 100% artificial snow and numerous criticisms of the environment and human rights, as well as only for the 2026 edition, won by Milan-Cortina against Stockholm.
But if Sweden postponed its ambitions to 2030 last February, with an ice sports center planned in Stockholm and a snow center around Are, more than 600 km away, France and Switzerland waited until this summer to enter into dance, only specifying their projects in the fall, without political debate or consultation of the population.
Cascade of abandonments
The long anticipated favorites have, for their part, thrown in the towel: Salt Lake City prefers 2034 – Olympics for which the American city should go into “targeted dialogue” from Wednesday -, and the Pyrenees-Barcelona then Sapporo (Japan) have given up , notably dampened by costs.
Much more than the Summer Games, the recent history of the Winter Games is marked by a cascade of abandoned candidacies, from Calgary to Santiago de Chile via Auckland, Innsbruck, St Moritz, Sion, Oslo or Lviv, often lack of support from the populations concerned.
In addition to less significant economic benefits than in summer, the Winter Olympics involve equipment that is expensive to build and even more expensive to maintain, especially when they hardly correspond to local needs – the ski jump, the luge track / bobsleigh and the indoor speed skating oval being the three most maligned “white elephants”.
Added to this is the constraint of snow cover: if snow cannons are essential everywhere, it is still necessary that it is cold enough to operate them and that the events remain fair – without it raining on the slopes, like at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, or that the mildness digs into the snow, like at the Sochi 2014 Olympics.
Ten potential hosts?
However, global warming will further reduce the sites capable of guaranteeing correct conditions: according to a study made public by the IOC in mid-October, only ten countries will still be able to host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. here 2040, compared to around fifteen today, with warming affecting “first and foremost the countries of Europe”.
And the Olympic body does not venture to predict the more distant future, while a study by the University of Waterloo published in 2015 estimated that of the first 19 hosts of the Winter Olympics, only 6 could remain ” climatically reliable” in 2080.
Hence a series of adaptations envisaged by the IOC: a “double allocation” 2030-2034 to secure the sites as soon as possible, savings to bring the Olympic Games to the equivalent of the cumulative world championships of the different disciplines, and a possible rotation between a handful of hosts already having all the equipment.
Furthermore, as for the Summer Games, it is a question of avoiding new constructions, therefore of allowing cities to associate even when they are far away or even in distinct countries – the luge-bobsleigh events of Milan-Cortina are thus approached in Austria or Switzerland, and the Swiss, French and Swedish candidacies for 2030 all involve significant travel.
But if the principle according to which “the Olympic Games now adapt to the regions and not the other way around” has been in place for years, what will it imply in practice? What transport times between snow or ice sites will remain acceptable? Which ceremonies or equipment should you cut back on to save even more?
On Wednesday, the arguments retained for the “targeted dialogue” should provide initial answers.