MADRID, 10 Jan. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The International Olympic Committee (IOC), through its leader Octavian Morariu, said Friday that it is still “waiting for the final decision” on the possible Pirineus-Barcelona candidacy to host the Games of the year 2030.
Morariu, who chairs the Commission for Future Host Cities of the Olympic Games. Winter, “has informed the way traveled” by the IOC in this regard, as stressed by the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) through a press release.
“The president of the COE, Alejandro Blanco, wants to state that for seven years the city of Barcelona has begun the study of a possible candidacy for the organization of some Olympic Winter Games,” he recalled the note after a meeting held in the city from Lausanne (Switzerland).
“Subsequently, the Generalitat of Catalonia collaborated in the aforementioned study extending it to the Pyrenees”, the text of the COE has continued, before pointing out that Morariu had mentioned as a key issue the election of Pedro Sánchez as the new president of the Government of Spain.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs, current vice president of the IOC, said that “nothing would be better received in Lausanne than a candidacy of the Pyrenees” in collaboration with Barcelona. “The great European massif has never had, yet, the opportunity to organize the great festival of some Winter Olympics,” he added.
Marisol Casado, a component of the IOC and president of the International Triathlon Union (ITU), commented that “Spain is a great sporting and organizational reference” within the Olympic movement. “All of us who are and feel the sport would like, and would support, a possible candidacy for a Winter Games,” he said.
José Perurena, who is also a member of the IOC and chairs the International Canoeing Federation, has said that the mention “in the interest of a possible candidacy” was “in accordance” with the IOC 2020 Agenda; this one “analyzes from the beginning” all the possible candidacies. “And, without any doubt, the Pyrenees offers all the conditions and guarantees for the organization of great Games,” he concluded.