The Winter Games, okay, but not at any cost. This is, in essence, the message of a collective made up of around twenty NGOs, elected officials, athletes and French scientists. Mobilized around the need for an event “ compatible with respect for planetary limits and beneficial for populations and territories », These sustainability activists published a press release this week detailing the conditions for organizing the Winter Games. The list includes around fifteen, including tracks “made mostly with natural snow”, an Olympic device “with 100% existing infrastructure”, but also the possibility of going to “ at least 80% of sites by train or other public transport”, or even a renunciation by the organizing committee of “ partnerships with sponsors whose activity promotes highly polluting or resource-consuming behaviors and products”. The collective includes two big names in French winter sports, former biathlete Marie Dorin-Habert, triple Olympic medalist, and Mathieu Crepel, double snowboard world champion. “Major sporting events, desired and supported by public authorities, must be thought of and organized as tools serving a social and territorial project, allowing the habitability of these spaces in the long term”, insists the press release. The signatories ask the IOC and international federations “to integrate climate change into the design of the event”. They also want to organize a citizen consultation on the French Alps Olympic project for the 2030 Winter Games.
