Martin Fourcade wanted to become president of the national organizing committee for the 2030 Winter Olympics, but it didn’t happen. The French biathlon legend felt the disappointment for a long time.
French biathlon icon Martin Fourcade was determined to become president of the national organizing committee for the 2030 Winter Olympics. The fact that this didn’t work out was “painful” for him, he said about six months after his withdrawal in an interview with L’Équipe : “I was hurt. I don’t want to deny that.”
The 2030 Olympics will take place in Nice and the French Alps, and Fourcade was initially considered a hot candidate for the post. But then his ideas clashed with those of important politicians. Among other things, when it came to the exact choice of venues. “I didn’t want to lie to myself,” the 37-year-old described.
Martin Fourcade speaks about a big disappointment
“We are working on a regional project at a time when the mountains are threatened by global warming and we have to protect natural habitats,” Fourcade explained, adding: “I didn’t see this project as ecological nonsense. I want to put that into perspective: I didn’t feel that this project inherently contained anything like that.”
“The Winter Olympics must belong to the mountains”
In his opinion, nature and environmental protection should have played a more central role in the planning. “They must form a kind of basis on which to build, and must not be added in the middle of a project to make it acceptable. The Winter Olympics must belong to the mountains, to the people who live there every day,” said Fourcade.
As a result, the Frenchman described his withdrawal as a “conscious decision”. Fourcade, who was a six-time Olympic champion and 13-time world champion, did “feel that he could contribute something to this project” but was not prepared to make all the compromises. At the end of February, the former freestyle skier Edgar Grospiron took over the management of the committee.
However, this did not pass Fourcade without a trace. There followed “some difficult months,” as he revealed: “I first had to take a deep breath, spend time with my loved ones and reorient myself before I come out of my cave again.”