Chaos over the 2030 Games: Grospiron resigns as president of the Organising Committee

A year and a half after being chosen as president of the Organising Committee, following Martin Fourcade's refusal to take on the role for which he had initially been selected, Edgar Grospiron has been swept up in a crisis that had already been affecting the governance of the Alpes 2030 Games for months.

The former Olympic mogul skiing champion had effectively lost the confidence of the main parties involved in the organisation, from the French government and local authorities to the French Olympic Committee. Tasked with the difficult management of an event spread across a wide area with diverging local interests, in recent months Grospiron saw Nice's new mayor withdraw his support. Nice was one of the flagship elements of the project, intended to become an ice-sports hub and host the closing ceremony on the Promenade des Anglais. The mayor refused to provide venues for the ice hockey tournament, resulting in the ice-sports hub being moved to Lyon. Meanwhile, Val d'Isère's “demands” at Méribel's expense have resurfaced, with Méribel originally selected to host the men's alpine skiing events.

On the internal front, according to French news websites, his centralising management style led first to the resignations of operations director Anne Murac and communications director Arthur Richer and then, during the Milano Cortina Games, to that of general director Cyril Linette, due to irreconcilable disagreements with Grospiron. 

Faced with the daunting task of reconciling different and distant territories and spheres, as happened with the most recent Italian Olympics, the 2030 Games currently find themselves without a functioning management structure. The next step will be a meeting scheduled for 14 September to identify an interim solution, pending the selection of a new president of the Organising Committee.