France’s top sports administrators vowed to build on the country’s record medal haul at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, as they look ahead to hosting the Games in the French Alps in 2030.
"The momentum has now been set," said France's Olympic committee chief Amelie Oudéa-Castéra, after a lavish celebration to welcome home the delegation that harvested 23 medals during the 16-day event.
"This grand return marked the real start of our journey towards 2030," she said.
Around 6,500 well-wishers packed into the Olympic Hall in Albertville, south-eastern France, to hail the returning athletes.
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"I haven't had much time to take it all in," said Mathis Desloges, who won three silver medals – all of them behind Norway's Johannes Hosflot Klaebo, who became a Winter Olympics legend by claiming all six events he contested in cross-country skiing.
"What happened during those two weeks of the Olympics was just crazy," Desloges added. "I'm still on cloud nine."
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Quentin Fillon Maillet returned as the most successful French athlete at a summer or winter Games.
His three gold medals and a bronze from Milano Cortina were added to his two golds and three silvers from Beijing in 2022, allowing him to eclipse the feats of fencers Roger Ducret and Philippe Cattiau in the 1920s and 1930s.
"What I remember most about the Games are the medals, of course," said the 33-year-old. "But above all it was the emotions, especially those shared in the relays. Becoming the most decorated French athlete in Olympic history is a source of immense pride and a joy that is difficult to describe."
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Oudéa-Castéra's public rallying call came two days before a round of executive bloodletting was disclosed.
Cyril Linette, one of the top operators on the 2030 Winter Olympics organising committee (Cojop), stepped down after a bust-up with committee supremo Edgar Grospiron.
"At the meeting of the board in Milan, Cojop and other interested parties took note of the departure of chief executive Cyril Linette," said a Cojop statement.
Handpicked by Grospiron, the 55-year-old former sports journalist had been in post since last April and was the fourth senior manager to leave in the past two months.
Bertrand Meheut, the chair of the organising team's compensation committee, was the first to depart. He was followed by director of operations Anne Murac and the communications chief Arthur Richter.
"These difficulties we are experiencing must be looked at clearly," Grospiron told a French Senate committee convened to discus the issues affecting the leadership.
"Their existence cannot be denied. In order to get over them we have to act methodically, rigorously, and as a team."
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Grospiron, who won the freestyle skiing gold for France in the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, refused to divulge the reasons for the split and conceded the crisis had prompted delays in organising sponsorship deals, finalising venues and the choice of additional sports for the 203o extravaganza.
"The delays we have had for these subjects has absolutely no impact on the delivery of the Games," Grospiron insisted.
"All of them are progressing. We are in a very positive dynamic," the 56-year-old added.
The 2030 Winter Games, scheduled to take place between 1 and 17 February 2030, will receive full backing from the government, said France's Prime Minister Sébastian Lecornu at Monday night's welcoming ceremony.
“Those who want the 2030 Olympic Games in the French Alps to fail will be ignored,” he said. “Every time we have the same people who come along and sow doubt, saying: ‘We won't make it.’ And yet, every time, we do make it."
Speedskating outside France in 2030
Cojop has confirmed that it will follow International Olympic Committee, guidelines and stage speed skating in 2030 outside France.
Venues in Turin in northern Italy and in Heerenveen in northern Netherlands have been earmarked as potential sites.
"This decision has already been taken," said Grospiron. "So the organising committee has to go on what has already been decided.
"For the first time we will have a Games with a discipline in another European country. We will see if other Games do it."
Under current plans, the events in France will be spread across clusters in Nice, the Haute-Savoie, Savoie, and Briançon.
The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix in south-eastern France in 1924. France hosted the sports fest again in 1968 in Grenoble and for a third time in Albertville.
