Fort des Têtes, overlooking the city of Briançon (Hautes-Alpes), April 15, 2025. JEFF PACHOUD/AFP
It is still not certain that the Fort des Têtes in Briançon, at the heart of the Alps, will host one of the four Olympic villages for the 2030 Winter Games, as planned. France is set to organize these Games following the Italian edition. The first two weeks of Milan-Cortina ended on Sunday, February 22. The Paralympic athletes will begin competing on March 6, but already attention is turning to the other side of the Alps. The arrival of the Olympic flag in the French Alpine town of Albertville on Monday served as a reminder that there are barely four years left to deliver the sites, accommodations and access infrastructure on time and within budget.
Housing athletes in the now-empty military complex overlooking Briançon was the idea that the town's independent Mayor Arnaud Murgia had when Renaud Muselier, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region (PACA), suggested hosting a village. It was late 2023, and France, the only candidate selected to organize the 2030 Games, was in "targeted" talks with the International Olympic Committee. Both regions, PACA and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, had each hoped to host, but instead for 2034 divided up the sports: ice events in Nice, cross-country skiing and biathlon in Haute-Savoie, alpine skiing in Savoie and acrobatic events in Hautes-Alpes. "The city is equidistant from Serre-Chevalier and Montgenèvre, the two major southern resorts, and we have a train... Having a village here makes sense," Murgia noted.
