LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — While Salt Lake City is cruising toward being named the 2034 Winter Olympics host next month, the French parliamentary elections suddenly called by President Emmanuel Macron have created a bump in the road for the 2030 edition that the French Alps bid is expected to win.
Voting to confirm both expected Winter Games hosts is still the plan on July 24 in Paris, on the eve of the next Summer Games, the International Olympic Committee said Wednesday.
However, Macron’s surprise announcement Sunday of two rounds of national elections on June 30 and July 7 — and a possible change of government, if not the presidency — is delaying signing off paperwork that the IOC demands. Macron acted after far-right opponents made gains in European parliamentary elections.
The IOC’s long-scheduled executive board meeting that opened Wednesday aimed to lock down putting forward both the 2030 and 2034 candidates for rubber-stamping votes in Paris.
Instead, financial and organizational guarantees sought from national and regional levels of government will now have just over two weeks to be completed before the IOC holds its annual meeting for about 100 members.
A French bid uniting the snowy Alps region and the French Riviera resort Nice came together last year.
The timeline of barely 5½ years to prepare for a scheduled opening ceremony in February 2030 in the south of France is already the tightest any modern Olympic host has faced.
“Between the 7th of July and the IOC Session in Paris we will reach this confirmation about the guarantees,” said Karl Stoss, the IOC member overseeing the Salt Lake City and French Alps projects for the Olympic body.
“This is very clear for us. We are very confident with this one,” Stoss said at an online briefing.
Each candidate for 2030 and 2034 has had no rival since entering exclusive talks with the IOC last November. That move left competing bids from Sweden and Switzerland out in the cold.
Salt Lake City previously hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002, after a bid campaign that became notorious for IOC members getting perks and favors. Several later were expelled or resigned.
France previously hosted three Winter Olympics at Chamonix in 1924, Grenoble in 1968 and Albertville in 1992.
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