Members of the International Olympic Committee’s Future Host Commission will be touring the greater Salt Lake City area this week.
For three days, they will make the rounds to the 13 arenas, mountains and parking lots expected to be used as venues if Utah hosts the 2034 Winter Games. As they do, Sarah Hirshland, the CEO of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, urged them to look for Olympic enthusiasm beyond the ticket booths and terrain parks.
“You will see as you walk the streets over next week people who have hats and shirts and jackets that they’re still exceptionally proud to wear from 2002,” she said. “Our goal is to refresh the wardrobe.”
And if much of the new garb comes in children’s sizes, all the better.
To kick off the IOC’s venue tour, local organizers held a meeting Wednesday morning at Rice Eccles Stadium to lay out their vision for the 2034 Olympics.
Though they offered few details, they painted a vision that entailed hastening the state toward environmental and transportation goals it already aspired to. It encompassed improving the general Olympic experience by lowering the obstacles to attending the Games, especially for athletes’ families. And, perhaps most robustly, it included inspiring children in sports and beyond.
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson brought the point home when she shared the story of her 7-year-old daughter, who, inspired by the 2002 Games, pushed through frustration with her jumps on the figure skating rink until she finally landed one.
“This is what the Olympics means to all of us. We all have a personal story,” Henderson said. “I’m not a good athlete, but sports teaches us things that you cannot learn any other way. And Utah is prepared. The Olympics is as much a part of who we are as anything else in our state. This is who we are.”
This visit by the Future Host Commission is the last chance Utah officials will have to bolster their bid for the state to host the 2034 Winter Games.
The commission will tour the proposed venues, which are all within an hour of the planned Olympic Village but include locales as far-flung as Soldier Hollow in Midway and Snowbasin Resort in Ogden. However, its members will also scrutinize the local committee’s plans for improving mass transportation, contending with climate change and air quality and gauging enthusiasm for the return of the Olympics.
According to estimates presented Wednesday by Fraser Bullock, the president and CEO of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games, 80% of Utahns want to host the Winter Games again.
Mayor Erin Mendenhall boasted that Salt Lake City and other communities within the state are on track for 100% net renewable energy by 2030 and have a “goal of zero waste” by 2040.
“It’s not that the Games are going to make something happen that we weren’t going to do anyway,” Mendenhall said. “It aligns perfectly with our future ambitions.”
Next month, the commission will present its findings from the tour to the IOC’s Executive Board. At that time, it will offer a recommendation as to whether Salt Lake City should be awarded the 2034 Games. If it sides in favor of Utah, which is currently the IOC’s preferred site for 2034, the IOC general assembly will be asked to vote on the matter when it meets in Paris prior to the 2024 Summer Games.
“About this high,” Bullock said, raising his hand well above his head, when asked how high his confidence is that Salt Lake City will get to host. The committee is hoping to sign the contract on July 24 to coincide with Pioneer Day in Utah.
Members of the Future Host Commission said Wednesday that they planned to ask detailed questions during their tours. Still, they gave the local organizers no reason to lower their expectations that the Winter Games would return.
“You have experience and, at the same time, you involve the young people not only in the sports but in the organizing process,” said Einars Fogelis, the president of the International Luge Federation and a commission member. “In our opinion, it is a big advantage.”
A restructuring of the Olympic bid process since 2002 has also helped make the decision more clear-cut. Sites no longer bid against one another. So unless something goes terribly wrong — for example, if France can’t pull all the parts of its bid together to host the 2030 Games — little stands in the way of 2034 for Utah.
“That means for 2034 there is no competition,” said Karl Stoss, the Future Host Commission chair, referring to the new selection process. “There’s just one candidate.”
Local organizers did not reveal how much it will cost to host the 2034 Olympics. That is one of the matters that will be discussed during this visit, Bullock said. He added that he expected to release a tentative budget in May.
In the bid submission, organizers estimated the cost to be $2.45 billion.
