Although the objective for International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach on his trip to Madrid this Wednesday will be to strengthen cooperation in working with refugees, he will also learn about the latest developments regarding the Spanish bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics.
A source close to Bach confirmed to Around The Rings the presence of the Olympic leader in Spain for a meeting of the Olympic Refuge Foundation on June 1 in Madrid “at the headquarters of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE).”
Bach will also visit the Sports Center for Refugees located in the municipality of Getafe, south of Madrid. The center, named after COE president Alejandro Blanco, is funded in part by Olympic Solidarity and is considered the first sports center for refugees in the world.
The IOC source said a Memorandum of Understanding will be signed between the Olympic Refuge Foundation, the EOC and the Spanish Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration “with the commitment to work together to support the refugee sports complex and maximize its impact.”
Bach’s visit comes six days after it was announced in Oviedo, in northern Spain, the Foundation and the Refugee Olympic Team had won the prestigious 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports.
The arrival in Madrid of Bach also occurs 24 hours after the Annual General Assembly of the COE, which unanimously approved the continuation of talks to form an Olympic bid for the Pyrenees involving Catalonia and Aragon.
But Alejandro Blanco made it clear an Extraordinary Assembly will choose only one of the two projects if the governments of the two communities do not agree.
After eleven meetings, Aragon and Catalonia still appear far apart from reaching an agreement. The latest proposal places 54 events and 2,138 athletes in Aragon and 42 events and 2,608 athletes in Catalonia. Another 960 participants would go outside of Spain, in disciplines such as ski jumping, for which there are no facilities in the Pyrenees.
The Pyrenees are the only major European mountain range that has not hosted the Winter Olympics.
On the other hand, the Aragonese government has insisted the technical bases of the project benefit Catalonia, which has so far prevented the agreement from being closed and forced the visit of the IOC experts to be delayed.
Sapporo, Salt Lake City and Vancouver, the other contenders in the 2030 race, have already received their first inspections.
The COE assembly was attended by Juan Antonio Samaranch, vice president of the IOC, EFE said.
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