“No plan A or plan B”: the Minister of Sports calms things down on the controversy surrounding ice sports in Nice at the 2030 Olympics

“No city” wants to withdraw: Sports Minister Marina Ferrari calmed things down on Monday over a controversy arising from the rejection by its new mayor Éric Ciotti of the places planned in Nice to host ice sports at the 2030 Winter Games. She assured that the question would be resolved by the end of June, the date planned for the final announcement of the sites selected for the “French Alps 2030” Olympic and Paralympic Games.

While saying on Friday that he was “extremely attached to the Olympic Games being held in Nice”, Éric Ciotti repeated his refusal of the current project to temporarily transform the Nice football team’s stadium to host the hockey events and to build, next to it, a new complex for figure skating and an Olympic village.

Refusing that OGC Nice be deprived of its Allianz Riviera stadium for 6 months and for an “exorbitant cost”, and that the ice rink and the Olympic village be built ex nihilo, he proposes “other places” in existing infrastructures. However, Renaud Muselier, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region but also of Solideo, the public establishment responsible for delivering the works for the 2030 Olympics, increased the pressure by affirming “the need” for a decision for Nice before the end of April. Otherwise there will be a “plan B”.

Horizon June

“There is no plan A or plan B for the moment,” Marina Ferrari cut in on Monday. “Today, among the candidate cities, there is no desire to leave the map of sites, quite the contrary,” continued the minister on the sidelines of the launch, in a college in Lyon, of the 10th Olympic and Paralympic Week intended to develop the practice of sport among young people at school and outside.

“We set a horizon for the month of June for the map of sites precisely because we wanted to both take into account the municipal elections but also to refine the different costs,” she assured, without ever mentioning the name of Nice or another city.

On the governance crisis at the 2030 Olympics organizing committee, “things are progressing (…) with a recruitment process for a new general director (…) by the end of April,” announced Marina Ferrari. At the end of February, number 2, Cyril Linette, resigned, preceded in a few months by three high-ranking Cojop executives.