Never before in the Games history had a bid been publicly and even legally bound to such prerequisites. There is usually uncertainty, excitement and happiness or despair when these grand selections are set to be announced, yet there was none of that at the 142nd IOC Session last Wednesday in Paris, as its president, Thomas Bach, held both cards with the names of “French Alps” and “Salt Lake City” for the 2030 and 2034 Winter Games, respectively.

Bach has not shied away from the eye of the storm since the World Anti-Doping Agency and US officials started bickering over the controversial Rodchenkov Act that American politicians passed as law in 2021. The most recent scandal involved 23 Chinese swimmers who failed drug tests but were still allowed to compete in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The New York Times first reported the story, and the criticism hasn’t stopped since. Not even in the City of Love did the hostilities cease after the official announcement hit the wires.

With Paris 2024 now officially underway, the IOC’s president has expressed his full support for WADA and gone through unusual lengths, to say the least, in order ensure that the global policing body frees itself from further overseas “attacks” as the IOC calls them. Both sides have repeatedly accused each other of politicising sport, yet actions speak louder than words and the selection of the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake on the condition that organisers lobby for some sort of truce from USADA and the US government was quite the statement.

 “That was the only way that we could guarantee that we would get the Games,” Utah governor Spencer Cox acknowledged. “If the U.S. does not respect the supreme authority of WADA, they can withdraw the Games from us.”

Countryman Gene Sykes, the chairman of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, seemed to have gotten the memo, calling for a truce, even after WADA boss Witold Banka rejected the notion that the amendment was designed to silence critics and fired back at frequent foe Travis Tygart, of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. 

"Relations are tough after all these defamatory comments, allegations, statements which are totally against of the principle of collaboration, it's a very difficult situation," Banka argued.

Apparently turned peacemaker, Sykes intervened after Tygart accused Olympic bosses of "stooping to threats" with the attached language to the Olympic host contract. "What we want to do is to cool the tempers and find a way for these organisations to constructively work better together. 

As soon as one side comes out with a statement, the other side comes out with a statement," the Olympic chief pointed out. "They have not been shy about throwing rocks at each other. It is an amendment that allows the IOC to have an escape clause if the United States somehow undermines the world anti-doping code. We're not going to do that. We're going to try to make it stronger."

The 2030 designation to the French Alps was also awarded under the condition that France gives financial commitments, and President Emmanuel Macron assured IOC members he would follow suit by asking his next prime minister to uphold a guarantee and even incorporate further legal clauses. 

"I assure you I will ask the next prime minister to include not only this guarantee but also an Olympic law in the priorities of the new government. France wants to show the rest of the world that the Winter Games are not just history but part of our future."

The future is now in the hands of politicians like Macron and Cox to manoeuvre the sometimes murky waters that sports dabbles in. As the grandiose Paris 2024 opening ceremony progressed through the Seine river in pouring rain but without incidents of note on Friday, spreading a worldwide message of tolerance and unity amidst a local political storm and global conflicts aplenty, the hushed behind-the-curtain negotiations kept on between officials regarding the upcoming Games.

Whether those next Olympics editions are with or without Russian and Belarusian athletes, or a boycott of Israel is actually enforced, as many demand, remains to be seen. What we know now is that the IOC intends for two of the next five to be in held US soil and is doing all it can to ensure that WADA’s stamp of approval is met with a more than diplomatic nod by American authorities.

Parties abounded in Salt Lake in celebration before the Paris festivities that Bach himself presided kicked off, yet a salty feeling persisted among officials despite the general assumption that the IOC will never really go through with its warning. But in the big theatre of Olympic sports politics, the unveiled threat will no doubt stand out as an unprecedented asterisk.