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With time running out to produce guarantees, will French Alps 2030 Winter Games bid be saved by President Macron’s promise?

The deadline in Wednesday morning. The Prime Minister has no capacity to sign the required document that is not considered part of his 'current affairs'. The President also has no authority to sign.

Martin Fourcade, five-time Olympic biathlon champion, has thrown his support behind the French Alps 2030 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (Photo: CNOFS)
Martin Fourcade, five-time Olympic biathlon champion, has thrown his support behind the French Alps 2030 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (Photo: CNOFS)

Reporting from Palais des Congrès in Paris, France – With time running out, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the French Prime Minister will be able to deliver a necessary signed Olympic Delivery Guarantee that is required for the French Alps 2030 Winter Games bid to be elected, as scheduled on Wednesday.

But AFP has learned that French President Emmanuel Macron will join a final presentation to over 100 voting International Olympic Committee (IOC) members at the Paris Session to provide his own promise that the French government will back the Games. It was Macron’s snap election call last month that led to the dissolution of the government leaving an interim Prime Minister without popular support.

The Prime Minister has no capacity to sign the required document that is not considered part of his ‘current affairs’. The President also has no authority to sign.

But Macron, who also joined the final pitch when Paris 2024 was elected Summer Games host in 2017, hopes to leverage his strong partnership with the IOC and president Thomas Bach to get by with a promise.

It would be unusual for the IOC to sign a host city agreement without the Olympic Delivery Guarantee in place, but there could be an exception in this case. The French Alps bid was singled out as the preferred candidate for 2030 last November from among Switzerland and Sweden. The Swiss bid has now pivoted to 2038 and there are no other candidates in the running.

The Games are expected to open in just a little more than five years so time is running short.

Could IOC Executives reject, or even delay the bid while meeting in the French capital where the Summer Games will be celebrated starting Friday? Could there be a conditional award?

Last week Bach said “without guarantees we cannot make an unconditional decision.”

Today he confirmed at a press conference following day one of the 142nd IOC Session “there will be a vote on the 2030 project.”

“It will be a vote linked to conditions,” Bach said.

According to the Olympic Charter a Games host cannot be elected within its own national borders. But IOC Executives assured last year that this rule does not apply to the French Alps 2030 bid because there are no rivals in the race and it isn’t an election.

Now members might have to decide whether to grant an exception to elect the bid with conditions, which would make home field advantage a clear benefit.

Plans have not changed for the presentation and election Wednesday and if the vote goes ahead the IOC could break two of its own important rules with one bid, further tarnishing its new reformed bid process.

After the French Alps’ presentation Wednesday, Salt Lake City will make it’s final pitch to host the 2034 Winter Games. With all guarantees delivered in time for the March deadline, the American city is expected to be ratified by members in the following vote.

[Edited to update with Bach’s new comments from press conference]

A senior producer and award-winning journalist covering Olympic bid business as founder of GamesBids.com as well as providing freelance support for print and Web publications around the world. Robert Livingstone is a member of the Olympic Journalists Association and the International Society of Olympic Historians.

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