Edgar Grospiron, the 1992 Olympic champion in moguls skiing, resigned on Thursday, September 10, as president of the organizing committee for the 2030 Winter Olympics, which are due to be held in the French Alps.
He said he had reached the point where it had become fairer to step aside than to keep clinging to the role, according to comments reported by French broadcaster LCI.
A fiasco that could have been stopped
Christophe Barbier, a political columnist for LCI, said the resignation brought to a close a fiasco that could have been stopped or anticipated.
Barbier said Grospiron could have been eased out of the post as early as the start of 2026, pointing to a wave of departures within his team at the time, including senior officials.
Barbier said Grospiron bears part of the responsibility for the failings that led to his exit, but argued that the fiasco stemmed above all from a political failure rather than from Grospiron himself.
Barbier said he had also highlighted a number of dysfunctions within the organizing committee that contributed to the resignation.
A bid built on regional politics
Grospiron won Olympic gold in moguls, a freestyle skiing discipline in which competitors ski down a bumped course while performing jumps, at the 1992 Albertville Games, the last time France hosted the Winter Olympics. The 2030 edition is planned for venues across the French Alps, with the organizing committee tasked with preparing infrastructure and operations in the years before the Games open.
According to Barbier, the project began with an alliance between two French regions, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, both in south-eastern France, whose presidents at the time, Laurent Wauquiez and Renaud Muselier, joined forces to win the Games for France.
Leadership changes since the bid was won
Wauquiez has since become a member of the French National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, and Barbier said his successor as head of the region does not carry the same political weight. Muselier, he added, is preparing to move soon to the Senate, the upper house of parliament.
Barbier said the bid, carried by strong regional ambitions at the outset, now looks weakened by the renewal of local political leadership.
