2030 Winter Olympics: Speed skating to be staged in Turin or Heerenveen as French Alps hosts avoid new builds
The speed skating competitions at the 2030 Winter Olympics will be held outside host France, organisers have confirmed, a move intended to avoid building venues without a clear legacy. The Games, branded French Alps 2030, will otherwise be concentrated across south‑east France, making the placement of speed skating in existing facilities a pivotal logistical choice.
2030 Winter Olympics speed skating: Turin or Heerenveen
Organisers affirmed that speed skating will take place in pre-existing venues in either Turin in northern Italy or Heerenveen in the Netherlands. That choice means one discipline of the French Alps 2030 programme will be staged in a different independent nation rather than on French soil.
Edgar Grospiron and the organising committee
Edgar Grospiron, president of the French Alps 2030 organising committee, said the decision to site speed skating outside France was a condition agreed with the International Olympic Committee when France became host. He told a media conference in Milan on Saturday — the day before the 2026 hosts hand over responsibility for the Games — that the decision has already been taken and the organising committee must proceed on that basis. "This is so that the Games in the French Alps can be as we want them to be, " he added, noting the move would make this the first Games to host a discipline in another European country.
Venue clusters in Nice, Briancon, Savoie and Haut-Savoie
French Alps 2030 will be spread mainly across south‑east France with venue clusters in Nice, Briancon, Savoie and Haut‑Savoie. Grospiron said that figure skating, which does not currently have a confirmed location, will take place in Nice, and that curling and ice hockey will also be staged there. The organisers have favoured using existing infrastructure in these clusters rather than commissioning new arenas that might lack a lasting role in the region.
Precedents and the legacy rationale: Milan-Cortina 2026 and Paris 2024
Organisers pointed to precedents for holding events away from a host city or region. Speed skating events at Milan‑Cortina 2026 took place in the south of the Italian city, and at Paris 2024 the surfing competitions were staged on Tahiti, roughly 10, 000 miles from the French capital. The key distinction for French Alps 2030 is that Tahiti is an overseas territory of France, whereas Turin and Heerenveen are in independent countries.
Programme gaps: 15% undecided, Nordic combined and ski mountaineering unconfirmed
Grospiron said about 15% of sports and venues for 2030 remain undecided, with details due to be confirmed by June this year. He also said the organising committee will decide which new sports, if any, will be added to the programme and whether any events will be removed. The future of Nordic combined has not yet been confirmed; that discipline was the only event at Milan‑Cortina 2026 without a women's competition. Ski mountaineering, which made its Olympic debut in 2026, is likewise yet to be confirmed as a medal event for the French Alps Games.
What makes this notable is the explicit trade‑off at the heart of the decision: prioritising a sustainable legacy and the reuse of existing facilities has produced the rare outcome of moving an Olympic discipline outside the host nation’s borders. The timing matters because organisers set the framework for venue decisions as they receive the Games’ responsibility from the 2026 hosts, and they expect to finalise the remaining allocations by June.
