France has embarked on the quest for a new Olympic adventure by formalizing its candidacy for the Winter Olympics in 2030, spread from Nice to Grand-Bornand – and marked by the promise of “sober” Games, based on 95% existing sites.
France will initially be decided in almost three weeks, during the IOC Executive Board which will be held in Paris from November 28 to 1er December, which will decide with which candidates it will enter into the dialogue phase. France will then know whether or not it continues this new quest after obtaining the Summer Olympics which will be held in nine months in Paris.
But it faces two serious competitors for these 2030 Olympics: Switzerland and Sweden.
The president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez, present Tuesday at the CNOSF alongside David Lappartient, and the president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Renaud Muselier, by videoconference, detailed the different sites of this application.
In the latter region, four sites were selected: Nice with an Olympic village, the media center and ice sports and the closing ceremony. An ice rink will have to be built in Nice for this purpose. The Isola 2000 station would host cross-country skiing and snowboarding; Briançon, half-pipe events. Montgenèvre would also host events.
In the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the Méribel-Courchevel sector, which hosted the Alpine Ski World Championships in 2023, is planned for downhill, combined and giant events. The Olympic springboard from Albertville to Courchevel would also be reused, with the bobsleigh and skeleton events in La Plagne. Val d’Isère would host the men’s and women’s slalom. In Haute-Savoie, La Clusaz would be used for cross-country skiing events, and Grand-Bornand for biathlon, in particular. The site for the opening ceremony has not yet been chosen.
“We will refine the cost of these Olympics during the targeted dialogue,” promised David Lappartient, while an initial budget of 1.5 billion euros had been announced.
During the presentation of this candidacy, former biathlon star Martin Fourcade provided his “committed support” to this candidacy by videoconference. “We are in a changing world, and these Olympics are part of this change. The Olympics of tomorrow cannot be identical to the Olympics of yesterday. We must not build white elephants, these demons of the past that we do not want to reproduce. »
This is also one of the promises of this application, which promises to use 95% of already existing sites.
Decision in 2024
“We believe that the 2030 Winter Olympics can be to the Winter Olympics what Paris 2024 is to the Summer Olympics […]those of a complete reform, in a changing world […] with sustainable, economical games,” assured David Lappartient
“We only left five months ago. We did a gigantic job all together,” explained Laurent Wauquiez. “There is this desire to bring the Olympics back to our mountains 30 years later. » France has already hosted the Winter Olympics three times: in Chamonix in 1924, in Grenoble in 1968 and in Albertville in 1992.
We know that there are big competitors. We also know that we are going to continue with the Paris Olympics. We are both very humble and very modest. There is great momentum.
“We are very well placed to win. Our assets are our ski areas. We have the support of our elected officials, of the President of the Republic,” recalled Renaud Muselier, dismissing the risk of light snowfall. “We have done studies showing that we will have snow until 2050,” he said.
The final choice of the future host of these 2030 Winter Olympics will take place during an IOC session in 2024, perhaps the one planned for July in Paris if France is no longer in the game, or during a session fixed outside France if it is still in the running.