LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) – The IOC’s chief executive for Olympic Winter Games said Thursday it is ready to move the ice rink event from Nice to Lyon. 2030 Winter Games.
of a slippery road In the run-up to the French Alps Olympics, organizers last week lost patience with the new appointment of Nice’s far-right mayor Eric Ciotti. there is an important controversy Regarding the use of the city’s soccer stadium for ice hockey.
The French Alps organizing committee said moving the ice event north to Lyon, 300 kilometers (186 miles) closer to Paris than the palm-fringed Riviera city, “appears to be the best solution at this time.”
“For me, it’s a great idea to bring ice sports to one city,” Kim Jae-yul, president of the International Skating Federation, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“The French Alps are the center after all, and Lyon will probably have a much easier time attracting people than Nice,” said Kim, who is the representative for winter sports on the International Olympic Committee’s board of directors.
The 15-member executive board, chaired by IOC president Kirsty Coventry, will meet twice this month and will soon have to approve changes to the event plans, which by Olympic standards would be dramatic within four years of the opening ceremony.
The French Alps Project, which brings snow to preserved mountain resorts, has consistently had one of the most demanding schedules of any modern Olympic venue.
It was drafted only in 2023, when it was the capital of Sweden. It seems likely that Stockholm will be chosen in the end. And on the eve of the 2024 Paris Olympics, approval was rushed by the IOC, even though vital legal and financial support from the central government is still pending.
Internal conflicts between French Alps organizers surfaced ahead of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in February. Project leader Edgar Grospiron They tried to reassure us that the project was under control.
“I’m confident that in four years’ time, in 2030, we will be sitting here talking about the great story of the French Alps,” said Kim, who was a senior official hosting the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics in his native South Korea.
Lessons from PyeongChang
Kim takes a sober view of what appears from a distance to be chaos, recalling that in 2017, “our friends in North Korea were conducting missile tests” and teams were concerned about the safety of their players.
“For us at the time, this was a routine test. I’ve been watching it for 55 years! But for the outside world, this is always different,” he said. North Korea ended up sending an athlete team and a political delegation. Win at Olympic Diplomacy.
Domestic politics are currently influencing plans for the French Alps, with even figure skating’s Winter Olympics centerpiece event trying to find a home. Speed skating, another sport at ISU, was being taught. Toward the Netherlands Even when Nice was the anchor city in 2030.
“We don’t know the details about the venue yet. That needs to be resolved,” Kim admitted.
lyon soccer stadium
The obvious choice for the opening ceremony, which is planned at Nice’s soccer stadium, could be Lyon’s larger soccer stadium. It hosted multiple soccer matches during the 2019 Women’s World Cup finals and the Paris Olympics.
“Preparing for the Olympics is a huge undertaking because it involves so many different parts and involvement of the government, local governments and private organizations,” Kim said. “But the Olympics are something that people take great pride in.”
“We are confident that we can prepare and deliver another great Olympic experience.”
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-Winter-olympics
