Reviving the Flame

7.1.2. During the Candidacy
The next phase is the risk not to become host city during the IOC voting. What Sion 2006 did not
understand by the time, was how crucial political alliances were within the organisation. While it is
important for the committee to maintain good relationships with the IOC members, one will also keep in
mind that “alliances” can quickly be seen as collusion or corruption.
Therefore, it is here up to the IOC to prove their organisation is changing, and must therefore favour the
project’s quality rather than internal or personal alliances and preferences. Such concern is capital if the
organisation wants to modify people’s opinion of their work. Though it is up to the various committees to
remind the IOC of this through good collaboration and dialogues.
7.2. Future Planning
Here, the main recommendations are focusing on this thesis’ topic: the legacies and their leverages. The
above researches point out five themes: tourism, environment, national identity, human capital, and sport
& youth. All of these are part of the heritages desired by the COJO of Sion 2026, and all fit in the
communities’ legacies targeted by the author. If Sion becomes host city for the Winter Games 2026, the
committee will have to insure the promised legacies are actually designed, managed, and implemented. To
do so, the Sion 2026’ committee is already creating a legacy organisation that will be in charge of this
tedious work. In this optic, the author proposes the below recommendations.
7.2.1. The Legacy Organisation
One of the main problem linked to the legacies is the lack of managerial skills, knowledge on leveraging
and team building. During many Olympiads, the Organising Committees planned on achieving heritages.
However, most expected legacies to arise from the Games. London 2012 is one of the COGO that created a
legacy association to manage and monitor the heritages, which proved successful in some ways (Felli, 2017).
The Legacy Organisation Sion 2026 is the key actor to assume heritages, from their design to their
implementation and monitoring. To avoid issues, the OCOG must support this organisation through
knowledge transfer. Case studies on previous legacy organisations need to be studied, which will help Sion
2026 to avoid mismanagement.
In example, in some cases, the heritage teams were the same than the committee’s. Such structure
renders the task more difficult: people tend to delay legacies’ planning and favour the Games’ organisation,
given deadlines must be respected (Felli, 2017). Though, this thesis explains that legacies require upstream
strategies in order for them to optimise opportunities and achieve heritages.
Recommendation 39