Catherine Raney Norman played a significant role in successfully bringing the Olympics back to Utah. She was the chair of Utah’s Olympic Bid Committee, working with her team for over a decade ahead of the July 2024 announcement the Games would return.
Throughout her time on the bid committee, Norman focused on athletes to ensure they and their families would have support if the Games came back to Utah.
It’s an emphasis born out of Norman’s own experience. She’s a four-time Olympic speed skater.
Norman grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and started as a figure skater, aspiring to be like her big sister. Norman said she would get up early before school to practice her jumps on the inside of the rink while short-track skaters looped around her.
“I was like 12 years old, and these 19 and 20-year-old boys challenged me to a race,” she said. “So I raced them, and I won, and they went out to my mom, and they were like, she's pretty good, she should think about speed skating.”
Norman ultimately traded her figure skates for the long, wide blades of speed skates and a new passion. She went on to win the U.S. Allround Championship six times and set three U.S. records. She also competed in the 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics. She said her favorite was the 2002 Games in Utah.
“Coming from a small sport like speed skating, where we're lucky if we have 100, 200 fans that come out for an event, to then come to Utah and compete here and have stadiums full, 6,000, 6,500 fans in the stands cheering U.S.A. nonstop,” she said.
Norman said it was also a special privilege to compete in the Games in the U.S.
“I remind people, prior to 2002 the games were held in 1980 in Lake Placid, which I wasn't even born at that time, right?” she said. “And I'm sure we have a couple of folks who are looking at 2034 saying ‘I wasn't even born in 2002’ and so it's really a special, privileged opportunity to compete in your home country.”
After retiring, Norman took a coaching gig to help a former teammate who was a Park City Speed Skating Club coach. He asked her to fill in for him temporarily, but Norman said she eventually inherited the club.
She helped grow the program, which then was mostly comprised of adults. Over seven years, Norman shifted the club’s focus to kids. In the process, she trained a new generation of professional speed skaters, including Casey Dawson who competed in the 2022 Olympics.
“I'm so grateful to have been able to do that and to work with those families, and I still reference them as my kids, even though they're grown adults, and I still follow them all to see how they're doing,” she said.
In addition to coaching, Norman has supported athletes in many other ways. She got involved in athlete advocacy in 2008, eventually becoming the vice chair of the Team USA Athletes’ Commission. There she worked to provide athletes with comprehensive health care and opportunities outside their Olympic sports.
That also included helping athletes transition from podiums to more traditional careers by identifying and capitalizing on the skills they learned in competitive sports.
Norman’s passion for advocacy translated well when she started helping Utah plan a bid to back the Games. Talk about a bid began in 2010, but Norman said things ramped up in 2018 when the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee designated Salt Lake City as America’s choice for the Winter Games. She was named the chair of the Utah Olympic Bid Committee in 2021.
Since Utah already has its venues ready to go, she said it was the perfect opportunity for the team to think bigger.
“Because we have such a strong foundation from 2002, because we have our venues in place, because we have a knowledgeable workforce around sport and events, we can really think about bigger opportunities,” Norman said.
The theme for the 2034 Games is ‘elevate’: elevate sport, communities and athletes.
Norman’s focus, of course, was on elevating athletes; she’s spent the last three years meeting with athletes to understand how to improve their experience.
“The resounding piece of feedback has been, please help our families,” she said. “Often athletes qualify for a Games three, four weeks in advance of the team showing up in the country or families are trying to sort of roll the dice a bit like maybe we should go in and get tickets and hotels, but we don't know if our child is going to make it. That causes a lot of stress for the athlete and for the families.”
That’s why Utah’s Olympic team is partnering with the University of Utah to provide lodging for athletes and their families in the Olympic Village. Norman said this also aligns with Utahns values as the Beehive State is family-focused.
Norman and Utah’s Olympic Bid Committee also prioritized opportunities to involve Utahns. They brainstormed ‘Project 29’, an initiative aiming to bring sports and Olympic and Paralympic values to youth in all of Utah’s 29 counties.
The Bid Committee had its final meeting in Dec. 2024 and has since been dissolved. An Olympic Organizing Committee is in the process of being formed.
The new committee will likely consist of many of the members from the bid committee, including Norman.
The organizing committee will be announced in the coming months.
