The Government of Aragon has rejected the new proposal to share evidence made by the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) for the candidacy for 2030 Winter Olympics before becoming official, and insists on demanding “balanced and equal” games with Catalonia.
This has been assured in statements to the media by the Aragonese Minister of Education and Sports, Philip Faci, that on Friday he was unofficially informed of the proposal through a telephone call made by the president of the Spanish Olympic body, Alexander White.
The new proposal would include the three valleys of the Aragonese Pyrenees, Candanchuwhich would keep the biathlon but lose cross-country skiing, proves that it would go to the Formigal resort, while Cerler would host the ‘freestyle’ instead of Baqueira Beret (Lleida), which would keep snowboarding.
Zaragoza, the most affected
The biggest loser in the distribution, explained the counselor, would be the city of Zaragoza, which “would practically disappear of the candidacy” by losing figure skating in favor of Barcelona.
Faci has assured that he does not know if the deadline for the presentation of the candidacy is the one announced by Alejandro Blanco in the media, on May 20, but he has influenced the will of the Executive of Aragon to continue insisting before the COE for a “balanced” application.
As he explained, “one feels a certain dissatisfaction with the way in which we are working, because our proposal is not only not answered with some adjustments or a counter proposalbut on the initial one presented, a small modification is made in the Pyrenees and a large one in Zaragoza”.
In relation to this point, he added that with the new proposal, “we must think that the Pyrenees have not won anything or very little, and that the important tests continue to be in Catalonia”.
alpine skiing
One of the biggest differences is found in the distribution of alpine skiing events, one of the “queen” disciplines of the Winter Olympics, awarded by the COE exclusively to the Catalan resort of La Molina.
The Aragonese Minister of Education and Sports has explained that Aragon insisted before the COE on a “balanced” distribution of alpine skiing tests, either by sex (men or women) or by disciplines.
He stressed that this request had not only not been contemplated but that the COE had opted to give a smaller test and remove another (figure skating), adding that “if we previously had 2 tests compared to 9 for Catalonia, now there are 3 compared to to 9”.
“cannot accept”
“I don’t know if we have advanced or regressed,” Faci stressed, for whom the decision to move the acrobatic ski test (Freestyle) to Aragon, a test, he stressed, that “is not one of the big ones”, does not compensate for the imbalances denounced from Aragon.
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He has admitted that the claim of Aragon it happened to have tests in all the valleys of the Aragonese Pyrenees, but, he warned, “with important tests”.
“It cannot be accepted”, the counselor concluded in relation to the proposal that the COE plans to send next Monday to the governments of Aragon and Catalonia.