PARIS, July 24, (AP): The French Alps were named as the 2030 Winter Games host by the International Olympic Committee on Wednesday, though with conditions attached and signoff required from whoever is the next prime minister of France.

French President Emmanuel Macron helped present the bid to IOC members and gave assurances that the new prime minister and the government he intends to install after the Summer Games in Paris will underwrite all the organizational guarantees that must still be signed.
IOC members accepted his guarantees and gave their approval in an 84-4 vote, with seven abstaining.

“We would like to thank you for your confidence and trust,” Macron said in a brief acceptance speech. “We will be there and we will respect our commitments.”
National governments in Olympic host countries need to formally underwrite financial and security promises that are essential to organize and run the Games.

But France currently only has a caretaker government after legislative elections this month failed to deliver a governing majority for any political bloc or party.
Still, French organizers of the 2030 project expressed no doubts that they’d secure the necessary guarantees from whichever political bloc eventually proves able to propose a prime minister for Macron’s approval and form the next government.

“There is ... a political problem, a political situation,” said David Lappartient, the French Olympic Committee president who also is an IOC member.
“The president of the Republic himself, he has a lot of power, but not the one to sign financial guarantees,” Lappartient said. “He will instruct the new prime minister, when he will be known, to sign.”

The IOC set an Oct. 1 deadline for that. The National Assembly elected this month must then ratify that document by March 1, 2025, IOC President Thomas Bach said.
Because the legislative elections produced a hung parliament, Macron so far has been unable to appoint a new prime minister. He says the current caretaker administration will remain in place through the Paris Olympics that end Aug. 11.

What was expected to be a simple coronation of Salt Lake City as the 2034 Winter Olympic host turned into complicated Olympic politics Wednesday, as the IOC pushed Utah officials to end an FBI investigation into a suspected doping coverup.
The International Olympic Committee is angry about an ongoing U.S. federal investigation of suspected doping by Chinese swimmers who were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Games despite positive drug tests. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accepted Chinese explanations for the tests, and U.S. officials are now investigating that decision under an anti-conspiracy law passed after the Russian doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Games.
President Thomas Bach wants to make sure WADA is the sole authority on Olympic doping cases, especially with the Sumer Olympics headed to Los Angeles in 2028. The IOC added a clause to Salt Lake’s host contract, demanding that local organizers - including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox - push to shut down the federal investigation or risk losing the Olympics.