2030 Winter Olympics venues confirmed, with speed skating oddly being outsourced to the Netherlands

[Jess_43]

The International Olympic Committee has signed off on the full venue plan for the 2030 Winter Olympics, officially branded Alpes 2030, and the most eye catching detail is that long track speed skating will actually be held in a completely different country from the rest of the Games. Because France simply does not have a suitable modern indoor 400 meter speed skating oval, and the IOC's sustainability rules ruled out building an expensive new one from scratch, organizers have handed the discipline to Thialf, the legendary ice arena in Heerenveen, Netherlands, marking the first time since the 1928 Amsterdam Summer Games that the country will host an official Olympic event.

Thialf's commercial director Yvonne Kager put the Dutch federation's own limitations plainly, saying we are not a country that can host a complete Winter Olympic Games because we simply do not have mountains, but if we can take on this great challenge together and do our bit, we will do so wholeheartedly. The bid that ultimately secured the venue came from a six party national coalition spanning the Municipality of Heerenveen, the Province of Fryslan, Thialf's own management, the Dutch Skating Federation, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, and the Dutch Olympic Committee, all of whom reportedly reacted with genuine joy once the confirmation actually landed. Analysts have taken to describing the whole arrangement as a territorial paradox, and the only other real contender considered was Turin's Oval Lingotto, a repurposed venue left over from the 2006 Winter Games in Italy, which ultimately dropped out of contention entirely.

Beyond that unusual cross border wrinkle, the rest of the venue map fell into place across several French clusters. Courchevel and Val d'Isere will host the speed and technical alpine skiing events respectively, La Plagne and the Tremplin du Praz ski jumping hills will reuse infrastructure originally built for the 1992 Albertville Games, freestyle skiing and snowboard head to Briancon at Serre Chevalier and Montgenevre, and cross country skiing and biathlon land in Haute-Savoie at La Clusaz and Le Grand-Bornand. Lyon stepped in relatively late to host the ice events, including curling, figure skating, ice hockey, and short track, after the original plan to stage them in Nice fell apart following a change in the city's local political leadership.

Thialf is already an operational, world class venue that regularly hosts major international speed skating competitions, but organizers still have four years of logistical work ahead to bring it up to full Olympic standard, including building out a localized housing zone near the stadium to serve as a micro Olympic village for the visiting speed skaters

2030 Winter Olympics: Venues confirmed including events in French Alps and Netherlandswww.bbc.co.uk