The Olympic Games will most likely return to the Netherlands. More than a hundred years after Amsterdam hosted the Summer Games in 1928, Heerenveen will host the Winter Games in 2030 – at least part of them.
The organizing committee of the 2030 Games, which will take place in and around the French Alps, decided on Monday that it wants to formally enter into the final phase of (financial) negotiations with the Netherlands for the organization of the Olympic skating tournament in the Thialf skating hall. The only other contender, the Oval Lingotto in Turin, Italy, has been eliminated for now. This means there is a good chance that the Olympic skating medals will be distributed in the Netherlands at the next Games.
From the moment the French were awarded the 2030 Winter Games two years ago, it was clear that a special solution would have to be found for long track speed skating. France has no indoor artificial ice rinks and is not planning to build one at a great cost. The French bid therefore stated that a foreign alternative would be sought, something that the International Olympic Committee did not see as an obstacle.
Swiss pray
At first, the Netherlands did not seem to be an option for this. Not only is Heerenveen more than a thousand kilometers as the crow flies from the French city of Nice, where the other ice sports will be played, but the Frisian skating hall was an option in the rival Olympic bid of Switzerland, which was ignored by the 2030 allocation.
Nevertheless, a first, informal visit to Friesland was made by a French delegation in 2024 – even before the 2030 Winter Games were awarded. An official request to the Dutch to submit a plan for an Olympic skating tournament followed a year later, and it soon became clear that the choice would be between Thialf and Turin.
Even the success of the temporary ice rink in Milan, where lightning fast times were skated in an exhibition hall last February, did not change that. In April, a large French delegation visited Thialf again and discussed in detail about visitor flows, accommodation for skaters and the intended French atmosphere in the Dutch hall.
“We want the Games in the Alps to be something fantastic, and to exploit the enormous potential of the region,” said Edgar Grospiron, the president of the French organizing committee, when asked about the option of skating in Thialf at a press conference during the Winter Games in Milan in February. “From the region around Mont Blanc. And perhaps a little further.”
Chansons and French tricolor
The allocation of the skating tournament to Thialf is in line with the new requirements that the IOC sets for the organization of the largest sporting event in the world. Because summers are becoming too hot for sports and winters too warm for (natural) snow and ice, and fewer countries and cities want to bear the financial burden of organizing, the IOC wants both the Winter and Summer Games to become more sustainable and cheaper.
These criteria work in favor of Thialf, where a major tournament can be organized tomorrow, so to speak. The Oval Lingotto in Turin, where the skating competitions of the 2006 Winter Games were held, is closer, but requires an investment of 12 million euros to be able to host another Olympic tournament.
At the same time, skaters, including Dutch top athletes, have been critical in recent months about a possible allocation to the Netherlands. They have major objections to the distance to the rest of the Games and the fact that the international skating circuit visits Thialf twice every season – last year this was a World Cup competition, the World Cup all-round and the World Cup sprint. The skaters are afraid that the ‘special’ Olympic feeling will be lost.
However, the Dutch partnership that now appears to have won the organization – Thialf, sports umbrella organization NOC-NSF, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the province of Friesland, the municipality of Heerenveen and the KNSB skating association – is convinced that a French Olympic skating tournament can be organized in the middle of skating-mad Friesland. The French organizing committee must still submit the choice for Thialf to the IOC, which will make the final decision in June.
If Heerenveen is chosen, the corporate identity of the French organization must be implemented in every detail in Thialf. The Frisian pompeblêds on the walls of Thialf will have to make way for the French tricolor in 2030; the mop music of Kleintje Pils will alternate with chansons.
