France showcases bid to host 2030 Winter Olympics

Article posted by Coliseum, November 30^th, 2023

Image: Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, CC BY 3.0

The French candidacy to host the 2030 Winter Olympic Games has been showcased to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Paris.

AFP said the bid from the Alps’ region joins offers to host the 2030 Winter Olympics from Sweden and Switzerland.

The bid submitted by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regions, will use 95% existing infrastructure.

The city of Nice would host the indoor sports of figure skating, hockey, short track speed skating and curling, with the possibility a new arena could be built there.

The La Plagne slope, built for the Albertville Games in 1992, will host bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events. The Courchevel ski jump would be used for ski jumping and the Nordic combined, and the Grand Bornand for biathlon events.

AFP further stated that French Olympic committee president David Lappartient said the 30-minute presentation achieved its aim of showing a united front between the different regions involved from Nice to Haute-Savoie.

Lappartient said, “It went well, we presented it together, united, that’s the message we wanted to give.”

Laurent Wauquiez, head of the Auvergne-Rhone-Alps region, added, “There was stress, we really felt like we were taking an exam but we had really prepared. We played a good match. There are major (financial) partners of Paris 2024 who have already said that they are ready to support us.”

Rival candidates Sweden and Switzerland also presented their projects to the IOC, Lappartient said.

Sweden launched a joint Stockholm-Are bid for the 2026 Games but lost to another shared campaign by Italy’s Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Now, Stockholm has said it is ready to host the 2030 edition of the Games, after the city council expressed its support for Sweden’s bid: the Swedish capital is expected to be the main venue for competitions.

Stockholm hosted the Summer Games in 1912 but has never hosted a Winter Olympics despite numerous attempts over the years.

Switzerland, meanwhile, has said it will bid for either the 2030 or 2034 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The bid process for the 2030 Games was thrown into chaos after Japanese City Sapporo, the overwhelming favorite to be awarded the event, “paused” its bid in December 2022 following decline in public support after a growing bribery scandal involving Tokyo 2020.

The IOC Executive Board will meet in Paris from November 29 to December 1 to decide which candidates it will enter the dialogue phase with.

France, which will host the summer Olympics next year, has hosted the Winter Games three times — at Chamonix in 1924, Grenoble in 1968 and Albertville in 1992.

The IOC is expected to make its decision in 2024.

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