2030 Olympics in France; “The Elysée wants it, Wauquiez doesn’t want it!” Why Martin Fourcade's candidacy for head of the Winter Games is debated

Three months after the Paris Games, the 2030 Winter Olympics planned for the Alps must be put into orbit but, to chair the future organizing committee, the regions and the State are procrastinating around the name of the former biathlete. Martin Fourcade, still on the track.

“Everyone agrees that he is a sportsman,” several sources assured AFP in recent weeks. Yes, but who? A meeting is to be held on Thursday in Matignon and the name of the future boss of the Olympics could be announced.

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The five-time Olympic biathlon champion Martin Fourcade, who put away his skis in 2020, seems on paper the ideal candidate to embody these future Winter Olympics, he who is even on the verge of recovering a sixth Olympic gold medal, from made of the confirmed sanction of a Russian rival for doping, which would make him the most successful French athlete at the Olympics.

The President of the Republic himself dubbed the Pyrenean by considering him this summer in The Team like the “Tony Estanguet of the mountains”. The champion was on the podium in July alongside Emmanuel Macron, precisely, to defend France's candidacy before the IOC, a few days before the opening of the Paris Games.

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“Wauquiez doesn’t want it”

But, since September, he “no longer held the rope”, several sources involved in the case explained to AFP. Its detractors highlight salary expectations that are too high and sponsorship contracts likely to give rise to conflicts of interest. A member of the IOC Athletes' Commission and the board of directors of the Paris Olympic Organizing Committee, the person concerned defended himself in a long interview with The Teamofficially applying.

“The two long-term partnerships that I can have are with technical brands which, in my opinion, are not in contradiction with the partnership issues of the organizing committee, Rossignol and Odlo,” he said. “The Elysée wants Fourcade, (Laurent) Wauquiez does not want him”, summarize several sources to decipher the battle waged behind the scenes between the executive and the former president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

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Prime Minister Michel Barnier, who was co-president of the organizing committee for the Albertville Olympic Games in 1992, is watching the Olympic affair closely, as is the former interministerial delegate to the Olympic Games Michel Cadot, who has become one of his advisors.

“Too independent”

And the story is not over. “Fourcade was out of the running 15 days ago but the Elysée and the IOC intervened and he is back in the race,” a source close to the matter told AFP. “The only one who can compare with Estanguet is Fourcade,” she adds. Behind the question of salary and the anticipation of possible conflicts of interest, “some especially consider that he is a little too independent”, several sources decrypted to AFP.

Supported by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions, and in particular Laurent Wauquiez, who has become boss of LR deputies since the dissolution, France's candidacy for 2030 was imposed in a flash, supported also by the president of the French Olympic Committee, David Lappartient, also from the right. The latter is also running for the presidency of the IOC. The name of another biathlete, Vincent Jay, also circulates a lot, or that of Marie Martinod, freestyle ski champion.

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I refuse to enter into a war of names,” Renaud Muselier, president of the Paca region, recently explained to AFP. “It will be played out on the job sheet. We make a job sheet with a mode of operation that is not the same as in Paris,” he added. Renaud Muselier pushed for there to be a woman. “They have different egos men, it's incredible”, according to him. The State and the regions are also working on the institutional mechanism. A priori, the future Cojo will be an association, like “Paris-2024”, based in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Solideo, the future structure responsible for building the Olympic structures, should be based in Marseille. An Olympic law must be passed to govern the event (recourse, taxation, rules relating to advertising, etc.). The estimated budget is around two billion euros for the organization, and one billion for infrastructure.

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The financial guarantee from the State, which was not given in time due to the dissolution of the Assembly in June, must still be voted on in the budget. While the fate of the Winter Olympics seems to be numbered in a future with less snow, the eight-time Paralympic ski champion Marie Bochet, who also ran as a candidate with Martin Fourcade, wants this 2030 edition to be in line with ” a slightly more reasoned era.