(Val d’Isère) Val d’Isère is organizing its Critérium de la première neige this weekend, a traditional French stage of the Alpine Ski World Cup, but has difficulty digesting the fact that its legendary slopes are being excluded from the French Alps project for the Games 2030 Winter Olympics.
There are two important ski slopes in Val d’Isère. The steep face of Bellevarde, feared by the best skiers in the world who face it every year in the World Cup, and the Oreiller-Killy slope, scene of international competitions since 1968 and which bears the name of two children of the country who became Olympic champions and legends of their sport.
So obviously, when the mayor of the Savoyard resort Patrick Martin learned last week that Val d’Isère had been excluded from the French Alps Olympic project, he did not understand, because for him: “ski racing is ‘is here “.
On November 29, like all the residents of the resort, he welcomed with joy the decision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to retain only the French file for the “targeted dialogue” phase, a key step before the official allocation of the first Winter Games in France from Albertville in 1992.
“We were happy,” says the councilor who still thought that Val d’Isère would host the slalom events. He will be disillusioned 48 hours later with a “phone call from Laurent Wauquiez”, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region explaining to him that “the IOC is asking for a grouping of sites and that therefore Val d’Isère and Isola 2000” had been removed from the project.
Even if nothing is set in stone yet, disillusionment is spoiling the party a little as Val d’Isère hosts the men’s Alpine Skiing World Cup on Saturday and Sunday, before welcoming the women the following weekend.
“It was great news to know that there were the Games in France,” assured Olympic slalom champion Clément Noël on Thursday. But for this native of Vosges, very attached to Val d’Isère since he spent several years there as a teenager, “it makes me a little sad that everything was moved to Courchevel.”
According to the IOC’s latest “feasibility study”, the resorts of Courchevel and Méribel, hosts of the world championships in February, would concentrate all the alpine skiing events.
“For me, the resort with the most history is Val d’Isère,” says Clément Noël. “(Jean-Claude) Killy, (Henri) Oreiller, the sisters (Christine and Marielle) Goitschel… We can’t even mention everything because Val d’Isère is so full of history for skiing. »
Jean-Claude Killy, triple Olympic champion in Grenoble in 1968, protested on Saturday about the removal of his station from the Olympic system, believing that “an entire part of the history of ski racing was being thrown away. »
“For the story, yes it’s sad,” also recognizes Alexis Pinturault. But for the Courchevel skier, “it makes a little more sense to do it the way it was done” since Courchevel and Méribel are two neighboring resorts, which considerably reduces transport problems in particular.
For the IOC, the challenges are primarily logistical. “Each time we manage to group activities into centers, we can pool resources with three objectives: operational simplicity, lower costs, athlete experience,” Christophe Dubi, director, explained to AFP on Monday. Executive of the Olympic Games at the IOC.
“It is certainly not up to us to choose the sites and if the future organizers tell us “It’s this system and not another”, we are not going to oppose it,” he nevertheless said. added.
For Mayor Patrick Martin, all is not yet completely lost. “Laurent Wauquiez told me that there was a 90% chance (that Val d’Isère would be ruled out, Editor’s note). I will continue to fight,” he assures while Mr. Wauquiez is expected at the station on Saturday.
“I just want to be part of the round table that discusses the project,” he says again. “Now it feels like the conversation is already over.”
Val d’Isère has therefore not said its last word. At the foot of the Bellevarde face Thursday evening, the five Olympic rings were projected onto the snowy ground… like a message to be sent?
