Exhibit A · The lead document

A Refrigeration Plant with a Sport Attached

France’s only sliding course: 19 curves, a 144-metre drop, and a refrigeration plant that runs whether or not anyone is competing. Whether the 2030 bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events run at La Plagne is the most expensive open question in the programme.

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Margin

The Games were awarded in July 2024 on condition that the state provide financial guarantees. Those guarantees came afterwards.

Why this one leads

Every other 2030 venue has a recreational use to help pay for itself. A refrigerated concrete channel has none.

Photo: Piste de bobsleigh, luge et skeleton de La Plagne 03 · Wikimedia Commons, used under licence

Altitude / Water / Closures

Everything now depends
on how high you are

All of Snow →

Rolling green hillsides with ski lift pylons rising above a forested slope

Closures · Lead

What a Commune Still Owns Once the Cable Comes Down

In 2024 the commune of La Morte voted to stop running the Alpe du Grand Serre ski area, which tops out around 2,200 metres but did most of its business below that.

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Height Itself, Listed as an Asset
Compagnie des Alpes, the largest operator of French ski areas, now describes altitude as the core holding in its portfolio rather than the number of lifts or the bed count.
Snow
Whose Water the Hillside Ponds Hold
Retenues collinaires — hillside storage ponds built to supply snowmaking — have become a contested infrastructure across the French Alps, drawing scrutiny over water rights, environmental permitting,…
Snow
The Number Operators Had Already Priced In
Météo-France and the Climsnow projections put specific figures on snow-cover reliability across French Alpine stations; this piece reads across those published projections from the low and mid…
Snow

Track / Venues / Budget

One programme, four departments,
and one building nobody can reuse

All of The Games →

National flags line the Pont Alexandre III near Paris 2024 Olympic signage and ornate lamp posts — Paris, July 2024: the host was named and the financial condition was set in the same decision.Photo: Mathias Reding / Pexels

Exhibit B

The Guarantee That Came After the Award

At its 142nd session in Paris in July 2024, the IOC confirmed the French Alps as host of the 2030 Winter Games on the condition that the French state provide financial guarantees — those guarantees arrived later.

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Refurbish, Build, or Send Them Abroad
Three options have been in public circulation for the 2030 sliding events: renovate La Plagne, build a new track, or send the disciplines to an existing foreign venue — an arrangement the IOC has…
The Games
What the Auditors Are Looking At
France's Cour des Comptes has taken an interest in the 2030 Games budget and the division of costs between the state, the regions, and the organising committee — the same scrutiny it applied to Paris…
The Games

Plate 04 · Where it happens

Four departments,
one programme

The venue split →

The 2030 venues run from the Haute-Savoie border to the Mediterranean: alpine events where the courses and lift capacity already exist, nordic events at sites with a competition record, and the indoor ice in Nice. Ten locations carry the programme.

Host locations named in the 2030 programme, plotted on the eastern departments. Geometry: real coordinates, projected.Map: project geodata

Venues / Budget / Precedents

Three Games, three inheritances

All of Resorts →

Guides / Lifts / Rescue

The mountain has a payroll,
and it is not all seasonal

All of The Mountain →

Two PGHM mountain rescue gendarmes in operational gear beside a helicopter on a high-altitude landing pad, the valley far below — A rescue crew loading at altitude. The PGHM is a gendarmerie unit funded by the state, not by the resorts whose terrain it covers.Photo: Maël BALLAND / Pexels

An Institution Older Than the Resorts Around It
The Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix was founded in 1821, predating the resort economy that grew around it; it remains a professional body with its own regulations, certification requirements and…
The Mountain
The PGHM: State Rescue at Altitude
The Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne is France's specialist mountain rescue unit, operating out of Chamonix and other Alpine stations as a branch of the national gendarmerie.
The Mountain
The Mer de Glace, by the Numbers
The Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in the French Alps, has a documented retreat record measured in length, depth and surface area over more than a century of glaciological observation.
The Mountain

The Lake / The Merger

Cran-Gevrier stopped being a commune in 2017.
The lake did not notice

All of Annecy →

Annecy's old-town rooftops seen from above, the Palais de l'Isle on its island in the Thiou canal, the lake and the Semnoz ridge in the background — The Thiou canal leaving the lake. Cran-Gevrier lies a short way downstream, inside the commune assembled in 2017.Photo: Palais de l'Isle in Annecy 11 · Wikimedia Commons

Six Communes, One City, and What Cran-Gevrier Kept
The 2017 merger that created the enlarged commune of Annecy brought together six municipalities including Cran-Gevrier, Seynod, Meythet, Pringy and Annecy-le-Vieux, each with its own administrative…
Annecy
The Lake and Its Long Water-Quality Record
Lac d'Annecy has one of the best-documented water-quality improvement records in Europe, the result of a sanitation programme begun in the 1960s; its clarity and biological health are now monitored…
Annecy
Reblochon, Beaufort, Abondance, Tomme: Four AOC Names from One Mountain Economy
The four principal Haute-Savoie cheese appellations — Reblochon, Beaufort, Abondance and Tomme de Savoie — each carry a defined production zone, a set of breed and altitude requirements, and a…
Annecy