What if there were no 2030 Olympics in Nice? While the Baie des Anges must host the ice events, the question of the hockey site seems insoluble, Renaud Muselier, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, and Eric Ciotti, mayor of the city, accusing each other of blocking everything.
With figure skating, ice hockey, short track and curling, an Olympic village, a media center and the closing ceremony, Nice presented itself as one of the main centers of the French Alps games.
the Allianz Riviera in “absolute red line”
But Ciotti, new UDR-RN mayor, a fervent supporter of organizing the Games in Nice, campaigned on alternative proposals for the host sites. And if he seems to have resigned himself to leaving the new ice rink or the Olympic village in the west of the city as planned, he repeated on Friday that the project to temporarily cover the Allianz Riviera football stadium to host hockey remained “an absolute red line”.
This hypothesis would deprive OGC Nice of its stadium for several months, even though the president of the football club, Jean-Pierre Rivère, was a pillar of its municipal campaign. Friday, a working meeting between representatives of Solideo, the public establishment responsible for delivering the works for the 2030 Olympic Games, Cojop (the organizing committee chaired by Edgar Grospiron), the State, the region, the department and the city highlighted “a blocking situation”, according to a press release from the region.
“I told Mr. Ciotti that his alternative project was not up to par,” insisted Renaud Muselier (Renaissance), interviewed by AFP. According to the president of the Paca region, the city of Nice proposed two solutions, one of which with a reduced capacity of 8,000 places, an idea according to him “swept out by Cojop”.
“Purely political considerations”
As for the other track, it would cost an additional “45 million euros”, “at the expense of the people of Nice”, according to Ciotti. “This position is unacceptable, and seems to have been decided well in advance,” he wrote in a press release, denouncing “a real provocation”.
“I fear that purely political considerations have weighed heavily in these choices contrary to the interests of our city, our region and our country. Nice is not an adjustment variable. We don’t do anything with the money of the people of Nice. The commitments I made to them will be respected,” he insisted.
Our file on the 2030 Olympics
While Renaud Muselier, who chairs Solideo, has been repeating for several weeks that the question of the Nice sites must be resolved before the end of April, the region has warned that there are only “three days left to break the deadlock” before a Monday meeting of the Cojop.
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