A small clap of thunder resonated Monday in the landscape of the French Alps. The most decorated Olympic athlete in the history of French sport, Martin Fourcade, will not be the president of the Organizing Committee of the 2030 Olympic Games. The former biathlon star seemed the natural candidate to bring the Winter Games back to France, 28 years after Albertville 1992. After several months of discussions, the Catalan nevertheless gave up for good, judging it impossible to “to consider this mission calmly” in the face of his disagreements with the other stakeholders in the project.
Lyon, a point of tension
On paper, the mission seemed tailor-made for him. And above all, Fourcade wanted it. "I got involved in the Alps 2030 project convinced that France was the country best equipped to take up the immense challenge posed to winter sports, and more broadly to our mountain regions. Because the Games are much more than a sporting competition, they have the power to bring people together to transform. It is with this strong determination, with the unwavering support of the athletes, the Olympic and Paralympic movements and the State, that I have been discussing the presidency of the Alps 2030 organizing committee for over seven months. The challenge of a lifetime, in the service of an extraordinary project", he wrote in an email revealed by the newspaper L'Equipe. The Pyrenees native says he was prepared to make personal and professional concessions to carry out the project. However, there was too much distance between him and other players in these Games for everyone to be able to come together.
"There are still too many disagreements to be able to calmly consider this mission. The mode of governance, the vision, the territorial anchoring: we have not managed to find common ground on these founding subjects. My ambition for these Games is clear: they must be in tune with their times, fully aware of the ecological issues and anchored in the economic reality of our country. Also, organizing these Games from a mountainous territory is essential in my eyes", he emphasizes. The piloting will be done in the Lyon metropolis, where Fourcade preferred “cities close to the sites” such as Grenoble, Chambéry, Aix-les-Bains or Albertville. The biathlete with 13 world champion titles wanted to place "the specificities of today's mountains" at the heart of the project, but "This vision is not shared by all the stakeholders in this matter", he regrets. The CNOSF responded that sustainability, sobriety, the vision of the mountain of tomorrow and the involvement of the territories were included "at the forefront of our concerns since the beginning", but the damage was already done.
Relieved muzzle, COJOP freed?
Faced with this discrepancy, Fourcade decided to withdraw, not wishing “sacrifice (one’s) convictions”.Michel Barnier, who had hoped to keep him at the centre of the game, ultimately failed to find a compromise. His words in any case sound like a warning about the contours of these Games. "I obviously think, like many, that Martin Fourcade would have made an excellent president but we must respect his decision", commented Sports Minister Marie Barsacq. This dramatic turn of events has not only made people unhappy. Renaud Muselier, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, was announced to be reluctant about Fourcade's candidacy. He welcomed his withdrawal to AFP.
"Paradoxically, a situation that was considered a cold snap with his departure is in fact a breath of fresh air. He knows the project by heart and to pretend now that he doesn't like Lyon, in order to leave, when it was validated in the Prime Minister's office two months ago, is not serious", he believes, describing the Catalan as “a loner who cannot work in a collective”. This sequence highlights the difficulty of tempering egos and an obvious lack of unity, oh so damaging. The greatest ambassador of French winter sports should have been a central part of the French Alps project. Clearly, this will not be the case. And this is a first failure, from which we will have to learn lessons in order to get out of the rut and start moving forward.
