There’s yet another potential bid to host the 2030 Winter Games — this time, from France.
A French member of the International Olympic Committee told L’Équipe, a national sports newspaper, that two of the country’s mountain regions should team up to bid for the next Winter Games that’s available.
Salt Lake City has been bidding for years to host another Winter Games, in either 2030 or 2034, although there’s a preference for the later date to avoid competing financially with another U.S. Olympics, the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
Other contenders include Sapporo, Japan; Vancouver, Canada; potentially Sweden and Switzerland; and an unnamed number of places that have not gone public. The field has been expanding since the IOC decided last December to delay making a pick for 2030.
Now, the IOC is likely to name hosts for both the 2030 and 2034 Winter Games some time next year, although there is no deadline for a decision under the Switzerland-based organization’s new, less formal bid process.
“If we succeed, we have a small chance, a chance, to get them,” the IOC member, Guy Drut, said. “If the request is made only by the Southern Alps, it will not work. We need a bid bringing together the Southern Alps and the Northern Alps.”
In the English version of the story posted earlier this week, Drut was described as referring to the French Riviera city of Nice holding ice events while skiing and snowboarding competitions would be held in the Rhone-Alpes to the north.
The newspaper reported Drut indicated that would be supported by another French member of the IOC, Martin Fourcade, but that the French National Olympic and Sports Committee had yet to formally back the bid.
Drut is seen as key to Paris being selected by the IOC seven years ago to host the 2024 Summer Games. France has been the site of three previous Winter Games, all in the Rhone-Alpes. Chamonix hosted in 1924; Grenoble, in 1968; and Albertville, in 1992.
Chamonix was part of a so-called “European super bid” for 2030 being put together by France, Switzerland and Italy in January that appeared to fall apart when the mayor of Chamonix insisted going after another Olympics wasn’t on the agenda.
GamesBids.com said Chamonix’s participation “would likely be a key component” in a new French bid for 2030. France’s last official Winter Games bid was for 2018, an Olympics that went to Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Correction: An earlier version misstated the name of a French member of the International Olympic Committee. His name is Guy Drut, not Drot.