The IOC does little publicity about it. The Olympic body even shrouds the operation in a veneer of mystery and confidentiality. But a so-called “technical” team sent from Lausanne, made up of three experts with secret identities, has been traveling for several weeks from one candidate city for the 2030 Winter Games to another.

The trio of IOC emissaries began their tour last month in Salt Lake City, Utah. Then he stopped in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is expected in Sapporo, Japan, before the end of May. Its stopover in Spain – Barcelona and the Pyrenees – was scheduled for mid-May. It was canceled at the request of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE), the project still being too poorly developed to be presented to experts from the Olympic body.

Officially, this meal tour is not really part of the selection process for the future host city of the Winter Games. It is only intended to be technical. The experts who left from Lausanne have the sole mission of helping potential candidates refine their files.

Anecdotal, then? Yes and no. Certainly, receiving envoys from the IOC is never trivial for Salt Lake City, Vancouver and Sapporo, even if the delegation of experts does not include any representative of the commission for the future host of the Winter Games. This visit is taken very seriously in Utah, British Columbia and Hokkaido Prefecture.

But the IOC and the project leaders know it: the battle will be played out on a completely different terrain. She could even make up her mind in the street. With a decisive arbiter: the referendum.

Since the Sochi Winter Games in 2014 and their bill in the tens of billions of dollars, popular consultations on Olympic candidacies have held no surprises. Their result is always the same: no wins. Opponents of the Games have thus dismissed the Olympic dreams of Sion 2026, Hamburg 2024, Calgary 2026…

One year before the IOC's probable decision on the host of the 2030 Winter Games, announced for the Mumbai session in May 2023, the question of the referendum is not approached from the same end by all the applicants.

The mayor of Sapporo, Katsuhiro Akimoto, has already announced that the candidacy will not go to the polls. Cautious and pragmatic, he explained that the opinion surveys carried out in recent months were sufficient to show support from the population. They display a favorable opinion rate between 52% and 65%.

No referendum in Salt Lake City either. But the Americans have still not officially decided whether they are candidates for the Winter Games in 2030 or 2034.

In Canada, the Vancouver city council last month ruled out the idea of ​​including a question on the Olympic candidacy in the next local elections, scheduled for October. But it is not yet certain that the project would definitely go without a referendum.

In Spain, on the other hand, the candidacy of Barcelona and the Pyrenees will have to obtain the green light from the population. The consultation is already on the calendar: it will take place on July 24. Provided, however, that political tensions between Catalonia and Aragon have not already reduced the project to dust.

In principle, an Olympic referendum is always a perilous exercise. In the case of Pyrenees-Barcelona 2030, it promises to be more than risky. The latest events demonstrate this: the opposition is organizing and making itself heard.

Several thousand people took to the streets last Sunday in Puigcerdà, a town of less than 10.000 people located in Catalonia, on the Franco-Spanish border (photo above). The demonstrators marched holding banners bearing the slogan “ For a living Pyrenees, stop at the Olympic Games“. At the head of the procession, anti-Olympic Games activists.

Organized at the initiative of the Stop JJOO group, the demonstration brought together 2.000 people according to the police, 5.000 according to its instigators. The opposition camp suggests that the Games in 2030 would swallow up considerable means and resources in a region where the future of winter sports is very threatened by global warming. They believe that the Olympic and Paralympic event would distract the attention of authorities and investors from the real issue of the coming years: the future of tourism in a region where snow will become increasingly rare.

The leaders of the revolt warn: if the candidacy is maintained, they will vote en masse against the project during the referendum on July 24.