After Salt Lake City, Utah, it's the turn of the French Alps to receive a visit from the IOC commission as the future host of the Winter Games. The delegation from Lausanne, made up of nine members and led by the Austrian Karl Stoss, begins this Monday, April 22, a tour of the competition sites which should take it, by Friday, to the resorts of La Clusaz and Grand-Bornand to the city of Nice.

In Salt Lake City, Karl Stoss and his team refrained from declaring the Americans already victorious, but their words left no room for doubt: the capital of Utah will be chosen at the end of July during the IOC session in Paris, as host city for the Winter Olympics in 2034. It ticks all the boxes. Its record reveals no weaknesses.

Will the delegation of experts and members of the Olympic body adopt the same attitude this week in the French Alps? Likely. Certainly, the file compiled by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (AURA) and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA) regions presents some blank pages. Guarantees from the authorities are still lacking. And the question of the speed skating ice ring is not resolved, between the option of temporary equipment, undoubtedly in Nice, and that of relocation abroad, in Italy, Germany or in the Nederlands.

But Christophe Dubi, the executive director of the Olympic Games at the IOC, wanted to be reassuring last week during an online press conference. “We have the broad outlines of the guarantees, he explained. We know they will be provided, there is no doubt about it. We have received commitments at the various highest levels, there is no problem. » Same serenity on the question of the speed skating track. The Swiss agreed: the French can take their time, they will not be asked to have completed the matter at the time of the session's vote.

Unless there is an improbable disaster scenario, mass is therefore said. The French Alps will organize the Winter Games in 2030. Imagined, wanted and supported by political power – the two regional presidents, Renaud Muselier for PACA and Laurent Wauquiez for AURA – the project is moving forward as a certain winner.

This Monday, the Lausanne delegation will be welcomed by the leaders of the candidacy, the leading quartet: David Lappartient, the president of the CNOSF, Marie-Amélie Le Fur, her counterpart from the national Paralympic committee, Laurent Wauquiez and Renaud Muselier. But the French team did not forget the essential, even for a visit that was ultimately more formal than decisive: the athletes.

At Grand-Bornand, the future host commission will be awaited by ex-biathlete Anaïs Bescond. In Courchevel, it will be welcomed at the foot of the slopes and the ski jumping hill by the alpine skier Alexis Pinturault and the former jumper Nicolas Bal. In Méribel, Olympic downhill champion Carole Montillet will team up with multiple Paralympic gold medalist Marie Bochet to praise the merits of the resort. Further south, former snowboarder Pierre Vaultier will play host in Briançonnais, along with another multiple Paralympic medalist, Arthur Bauchet.

Anything but anecdotal clarification: the Savoyard resort of Val d'Isère, initially selected in the application file to host certain alpine skiing events, then removed from the map at the request of the IOC, does not appear on the route of the commission of future host. But its defenders, Jean-Claude Killy in the lead, have not given up trying to get it back on track. Six years before the Games, anything can still happen.