The facilities at Soldier Hollow opened for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and have continued to serve as an Olympic cross-country ski training venue ever since, hosting athletes from the United States and abroad. It also has a rifle range for biathlon competition, which is fitting given the sport’s roots in Scandinavian military and hunting traditions.
The training center’s name also has a military tie.
“Soldier Hollow is named after a drainage here that supposedly is where one of the armies that came through Utah in the 1800s camped,” the center’s activities manager Mark Burnham said.
Organized by the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation, the event featured a panel discussion amongst U.S. snow sports executives. Athletes returning from the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games also attended.
President and CEO of U.S. Ski and Snowboard Sophie Goldschmidt said Italy produced a successful Olympics, but she has no doubt Utah will do even better in 2034.
“We can reset what it means to be an amazing host state, host city,” said Goldschmidt. The 2034 games can “put winter sports on the map in the United States in a completely different way… I love the idea of this state becoming a global hub,” she said.
Former Olympic speedskater Catherine Raney-Norman, who is on the 2034 organizing committee, spoke similarly of the event's legacy. The Games provide an opportunity to engage a new generation of winter sports athletes in Utah, the Mountain West, and the country as a whole, she said.
“That is the most critical thing,” Norman said. “We need to keep the momentum going and not let the lights go off in 2034.”
Ashley Farquharson, an American luge athlete who grew up in Park City and won bronze in the women’s singles competition in Milan Cortina, is proof of the legacy an Olympic Games can have.
“Just the other day, my mom showed me a picture of my whole family at the 2002 Olympics and we were here at Soldier Hollow, actually, at the cross-country ski races,” she said. “The legacy those Olympics left is a reason a lot of [today’s] athletes got into the sport.”
Despite the panel’s ambitions to elevate participation in snow sports in the United States, the bare hillsides around Soldier Hollow are a stark reminder that climate patterns in the Mountain West are changing.
But leaders point to innovation as a way forward. Colin Hilton, the foundation’s CEO, said the Dolomites had a difficult snow year in 2026 as well, and still pulled off a successful competition.
In the town of Livigno, he recalled, “they set up infrastructure with high altitude reservoirs and advanced snowmaking systems, and they were able to make enough snow for those events to succeed.”
Through similar innovations, Soldier Hollow will do the same, he said.
The Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation is a financial supporter of KPCW.
