major player in the Albertville Olympics in 1992, decision-maker for those of 2030 in the French Alps

Co-president of the organizing committee for the 1992 Albertville Olympic and Paralympic Games with Jean-Claude Killy, the new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, played a decisive role in the organization of these Games in France.

The new Prime Minister Michel Barnier, appointed by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, on Thursday, September 5, is not a complete stranger to the world of sport. While he held the positions of Minister of European Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Agriculture and Fisheries during the terms of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, without ever being appointed to Sports, he also had the role of co-president of the organizing committee of the Albertville 1992 Olympic and Paralympic Games alongside Jean-Claude Killy.

As a young MP in 1982, Michel Barnier was convinced by Claude Collard, former president of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee, to launch the candidacy of the Trois Vallées area, around Albertville (Savoie) to host the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. But by his own admission, to the newspaper The Teamhe does not “didn’t really know at the time what the Games were”and decided to contact Jean-Claude Killy, triple Olympic alpine skiing champion in Grenoble in 1968. They shared a dinner together in the hamlet of Fornet, in Val d’Isère and established the foundations of a candidacy committee.

Thanks to his election as head of the Savoie general council in 1982, he gave his ambition the means and even found an ally in Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris. And for good reason, the leader of the Rally for the Republic (RPR) had just launched the city of Paris’s bid for the 1992 Summer Games, effectively combining the two towards an Olympic destiny. When he subsequently became Prime Minister, Chirac defended both projects with equal vigor before the International Olympic Committee, until it decided to award the Summer Games to Barcelona and the Winter Games… to Albertville.

“That’s the day the problems start.”the future Prime Minister rewound in the columns of the sports daily in January 2022: his sidekick Jean-Claude Killy decided that there were too many sites selected by the bid and that their number had to be reduced, provoking a revolt by the stations eliminated from the system. The champion resigned and Michel Barnier found himself alone to chair the executive organizing committee.

A year later, the two-headed presidency would eventually reform and drastic choices would be made: all the women’s Alpine skiing events in Méribel, the men’s in Val d’Isère and the slalom in Les Ménuires. The duo led the Winter Games to a successful conclusion and Michel Barnier, by his own admission, “gain notoriety”. He was even made a knight of the Legion of Honour in 1997 and held various ministerial positions, before the most prestigious, obtained on Thursday 5 September at the age of 73.

Thirty-two years later, he will once again have a decisive role to play on the path to the organisation of the 2030 Winter Olympics, awarded “under conditions” to the French Alps on 12 June. Frozen due to the French political situation, the final award remains subject to guarantees on the State’s financial commitments, which must be signed by the head of government before 1 October. During the process of selecting the host city, Michel Barnier had shown his support for the French candidacy.