The embattled organising team for the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps needs to speed up work and pull together, the senior Olympic official overseeing the preparations said on Tuesday, February 3.
Pierre-Olivier Beckers, the head of the International Olympic Committee’s coordination commission for the 2030 Games, said at an IOC Session ahead of the Milan-Cortina Winter Games that preparations were “behind schedule.”
Beckers, a Belgian aristocrat, conceded that the French team had a shorter preparation time than in other Winter Olympics, having only begun work in 2024, when President Emmanuel Macron guaranteed the French state’s financial backing, but he warned that rapid progress was required.
“Due to a shortened preparation window, and that’s no fault of the organising committee, of course, the organisation remains behind schedule on several key deliverables, and this will require significant acceleration in 2026,” Beckers told his fellow IOC members.
“Once the Milano-Cortina Games conclude, the world’s attention will shift rapidly towards 2030,” he said, adding: “Expectations will rise, the pace will intensify, the work ahead is substantial, and the clock will start ticking even louder.” “But my feeling is that if you work as a strong, trusting team, a collective team, guided and inspired by the vision and the mission of this project, together you can only succeed,” he concluded.
Even in the coded, diplomatic language of the IOC, Beckers’ warning was unusually direct.
Third senior official resigns in two months
Bertrand Meheut, the chair of the organising team’s compensation committee, also resigned on Monday, becoming the third senior official to quit in the space of just over two months.
The resignation of Meheut, a former president of the Canal Plus media group, followed the departures of director of operations Anne Murac and communications chief Arthur Richter.
