Annecy bid team says famous setting will help Winter Olympics retain status

DURBAN, South Africa – Annecy’s exceptional mountain setting and famous resort could help the Winter Olympics retain its status as one of the world’s top events, the city’s bid team said Wednesday.

Making a final pitch to IOC members ahead of the vote for the 2018 host city, the French bidders said staging the 2018 Games in the Alpine town of Annecy and the world-famous Chamonix ski resort will help them stay true to their spirit.

In its final presentation to the IOC, Annecy used images of the region’s iconic mountains to advertise a bid that wants to bring the Winter Olympics back to its spiritual home and the place where the event started, back in 1924.

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“Annecy’s bid is an authentic bid … it is a bid from the mountains, from its inhabitants,” French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said. “A bid that is entirely consistent with the values of Olympism.”

Fillon said an Olympic host city must have “a soul.”

Annecy, the second city to present to the IOC at its 123rd session in Durban, is considered the outsider in a three-horse race involving Munich and favourite Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Annecy’s team also outlined plans for an environmentally friendly Olympics in a presentation involving Fillon, French sports minister Chantal Jouanno and halfpipe skier Kevin Rolland. The presentation was wrapped up by IOC member and former Olympic skiing champion Jean-Claude Killy.

“Being an Olympian, I know what that means. I lived it myself half a century ago,” said Killy, who won gold in France’s 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble. “The call of the mountains is not only that of one of the world’s greatest wonders, it is that of an entire community.”

Recalling France’s successful hosting of the 1998 football World Cup and the 2007 rugby World Cup, Jouanno said Annecy’s Olympic bid proposed a first-ever carbon-neutral Winter Games and said 90 per cent of the French population wanted the event.

The campaign pushed forward Rolland as the face of its final pitch, a world champion from Annecy who said he dreamt of being an Olympian competing in his home town.

“It is still the home of winter sports and the stage for the future,” Rolland said.