Miquel Iceta: "The candidacy for the 2030 Games has been a missed opportunity"

"If there are several potential candidates in the same country, the COE must evaluate which is the most powerful"

MADRID, 22 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta, lamented this Wednesday "the lost opportunity" after the confirmation of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) of not presenting any candidacy for the 2030 Winter Olympics due to the lack of agreement between the Governments of Aragon and Catalonia.

"From the Government we consider it a lost opportunity, we do not hide the disappointment of the disgust we have with this issue. By 2030 we did not arrive because the commitment that the COE had reached with the International Olympic Committee was the joint candidacy of the entire Pyrenees", explained Iceta at the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture, before the meeting of the Observatory for Equality in Culture.

The minister recalled that the COE is "in charge of endorsing the candidacy", while the Government's obligation is to "give an institutional and economic endorsement". Asked about the work of the Spanish Olympic Committee to reach the agreement, he stressed that they followed the process from the beginning and "they have done it very well", but it has not been reached because there were two parties in disagreement.

"I have spoken very little about the Games in Spain, but I have had enough of talking about them in Tokyo and Beijing, which I believed was our obligation as a Government, to make it clear to the IOC sports authorities that our support was total and that they could trust," he added.

Also, the leader recognized the trump card of the Pyrenees' candidacy as it had not been the Olympic venue for the Winter Games before. "It was our trick with respect to the three competitors (Sapporo, Vancouver and Salt Lake City), who "did not have to prove their ability", as well as their inconvenience in having already been an organizer.

Aragón is already preparing a candidacy centered on Jaca (Huesca) and bringing together the entire Pyrenees by 2034. "The future will have to be written on the fly. And that is where the possibility of an agreement or several candidacies is embodied, in which case the COE will have to decide which one to present," he said.

In fact, Iceta also cited the Olympic Charter, which determines the rules of the game. "In the event that there are several potential candidates in the same country for the same edition of the Games, it is up to the National Olympic Committee to select one of them, since only one candidacy per country will be possible," read the minister.

"What the COE wants is to win. If there are several candidates, it must evaluate which one is the most powerful from a technical point of view and which one has the best chance of receiving the support of the IOC," he said.