Covid-19 crisis obliges, Paris 2024 anticipates, “as a precaution”, possible budgetary disappointments. At the start of the school year, the organizing committee (Cojo), which must make its final version of the competition sites, will begin discussions that promise to be close with the elected officials. He is already working on many options with one idea in mind: now favor existing sites, to the detriment of temporary sites.
A change of course that would save several tens of millions of euros in the “Cojo budget” (3.8 billion euros), that which is used to organize the Games, that in which Paris 2024 draws to build temporary sites or to develop existing sites (cheaper option).
The aquatic stadium at the Paris La Défense Arena?
According to our information, several sites raise questions, in particular that of Place de la Concorde in Paris, intended for urban sports (climbing, breakdance, skateboarding, 3 x 3 basketball). If the question of the cost of securing the Olympic park built around (including a large entertainment area) is not yet resolved, the organizing committee is too keen on this site to remove it from the map.
The Cojo wonders more about the Olympic aquatic stadium (diving, synchronized swimming and qualifying phase of water polo). It will be built in Saint-Denis, opposite the Stade de France. But the equipment, dismantled after the Olympics, must be built for swimming race. It is planned for the moment very close to the Saint-Denis aquatic center. But Paris 2024 imagines other possibilities, such as installing it at the Paris Défense Arena in Nanterre. A less expensive project (the stands for 15,000 people and part of the structure exist) but complicated to carry out, two pools (a competition, a warm-up) being necessary.
Seine-Saint-Denis clings to the Media Village
At the end of the game, Paris 2024 also has two sights in Seine-Saint-Denis: shooting at La Courneuve and volleyball at Le Bourget. For shooting, a move is possible near the national shooting center of… Châteauroux (Indre). Volleyball could eventually fall back to Roland-Garros or the Porte de Versailles Exhibition Center (with handball).
The elected officials of Seine-Saint-Denis do not intend to drop new competition sites after the already recorded move of 93 water polo and badminton. The councilors of this department are attached to the Media Village of Le Bourget, transformed after the Olympic Games into a residential area and which would no longer have any real reason for being without the organization of events nearby. In Paris 2024, we point out the delay of the lines of metros 16 and 17 which will not be ready in time to serve the Bourget sites.
Longchamp racecourse in place of Versailles?
It will be up to Michel Cadot, who will succeed Jean Castex as deputy minister on Wednesday, to arbitrate the debates. And not only in Seine-Saint-Denis. Because Paris 2024 is also looking into the riding site of Versailles (Yvelines). Again, this is only a study track but the Longchamp racecourse, which appeared on the map of the 2012 Olympics, is watched closely.
If many options are possible for potential savings, a site, long discussed, will however soon be sanctuarized: that of Elancourt, in the Yvelines. Paris 2024 had for a time imagined organizing mountain biking in Chamonix but faced with the pressure of elected representatives of Ile-de-France, it gave up its project.
