(Paris) Between the final stretch before the Paris Games and uncertainties surrounding the French Alps for the 2030 Olympic Games, the IOC begins its pre-Olympic meetings on Saturday, which will culminate on Tuesday and Wednesday with the 142e session.
The most immediate deadline, the Olympic Games which start next Friday, pose few questions for the Olympic body: “Paris 2024 is ready”, assured Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, in mid-June during the previous executive board.
For over a month, the head of the Olympic movement has been praising “the enthusiasm that we feel throughout the city” and has been making numerous visits – to the torch relay route last week, to Insep and to the Olympic village this week.
The final operational preparations are the responsibility of the organizers and the fate of the Russian and Belarusian athletes, which has occupied the IOC since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, is settled: only 15 Russians and 16 Belarusians have accepted its invitation to compete under a neutral banner, according to the latest tally still subject to withdrawals.
But a more delicate issue was brought up in Thomas Bach’s meeting with Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday: the final award of the 2030 Olympic Games to the French Alps, which is supposed to be voted on Wednesday by the 142e IOC session, but which still faces a political and legal obstacle.
Due to the dissolution of the National Assembly, the French candidacy was unable to provide two documents required by the Olympic organization: the guarantee of delivery of the Games, which must be signed by the Prime Minister, and the “partnership contribution to the organization budget” between the State and the two regions Rhône Alpes-Auvergne and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.
Thomas Bach’s spokesman, Mark Adams, is expected to announce on Saturday from 4 p.m., after the executive committee meeting, whether the vote expected on Wednesday will be maintained or postponed.
The IOC is also expected to address concerns from the Olympic movement about the US federal investigation into the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) handling of the case of 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive in 2021 but were not sanctioned.
This case revives fears around the “Rodchenkov law”, which since 2020 has granted extraterritorial jurisdiction to the American justice system in matters of doping, creating procedures parallel to those based on the WADA World Anti-Doping Code.