Grenoble venues
Grenoble’s three Olympic Winter Games venues remain in use, over 50 years on.
All the city’s venues can be found in the Parc Paul Mistral: the Stade de Glace (now known as the Palais des Sports Pierre Mendès France), the Anneau de Vitesse and the Municipal Ice Rink (now the Halle Clémenceau).
The venue for the figure skating and ice hockey events and the Closing Ceremony, the 12,000-capacity Stade de Glace staged several major sporting events in the years after the Olympic Winter Games. These included the 1972 IAAF European Athletics Indoor Championships, the 1979 and 1983 finals of the FIBA European Champions Cup in basketball (now the Euroleague), and the 1982 Davis Cup Final in tennis. No longer an ice rink, it has also hosted the Six Jours de Grenoble track cycling event since 1971, the Festival International du Cirque since 2002, and the Supercross motorcycling competition since the 1990s.
A popular concert venue that has welcomed the likes of Elton John and Snoop Dogg, it was the setting for the opening ceremony of the inaugural ISF Schools Winter Games in 2018. That same year also saw the venue temporarily converted back to an ice rink to mark the 50th anniversary of the Olympic Winter Games. Like many of the buildings erected for Games in Grenoble, it was granted “Patrimoine XXe siècle” status in 2003.
The Anneau de Vitesse staged the speed skating competitions at the X Olympic Winter Games. It was the venue for several major speed skating competitions after the Games, the last of them the 1981 World Sprint Championships. Its track refrigeration system was removed in 1990 due to high running costs, at which point the site was adapted for community use. An outdoor venue, it is now used by local people for roller skating and jogging, and hosts concerts, festivals and theatre performances, including a dance and pyrotechnic show held in 2018 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Games. The Anneau de Vitesse has also become a meeting point for the people of Grenoble, who gather there for demonstrations and to watch football during the FIFA World Cup.
The one existing venue used at the Games is the Municipal Ice Rink, which hosted some ice hockey matches. Built in 1963, it was initially the home of the city’s ice hockey club but had its ice rink removed in 2001. Now a gymnastics hall used by schools and local clubs, it also has volleyball, fencing and handball facilities.
The Parc Paul Mistral was the site of the temporary 60,000-seater Olympic Stadium, which was erected to host the Opening Ceremony and dismantled immediately after the Games. The Olympic cauldron stands in the park to this day.