Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games paid a visit to Midway Wednesday.
Committee members briefed Heber Valley government officials on the likelihood of bringing the Olympics back to Utah in eight or 12 years and talked about coordinating efforts.
“We don’t want to be that entity that just says, ‘Here’s how the Games are going to work.’ We want you to be a part of the planning of this,” Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation CEO Colin Hilton said. “We want this to feel like you are shaping the experience of how the Games come into this community.”
Committee members said one thing they need from the Wasatch Back is beds.
President and CEO Fraser Bullock said for the upcoming pitch to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Future Host Commission, the state committee needs commitments from hotels. The 24,000 rooms needed from Utah County to Weber County need to be secured for athletes, members of the IOC, press and others who run the events, not spectators.
The state committee has 18,000 rooms committed and needs 6,000 more. Bullock said that means they’re running behind, especially in the Wasatch Back.
Former Olympian in cross-country Luke Bodensteiner is now the general manager of Soldier Hollow, the site of cross-country and biathlon in the 2002 Olympic Games. He said efforts to prime the community’s Olympic spirit and plan logistics are already underway.
“One of the real advantages about having an Olympic venue in our community already, even as we just go to bid now,” he said, “is that it gives us an opportunity to activate around the sport, activate around Olympism and things like that and kind of build the culture in our community around cross-country and biathlon.”
As an example, Bodensteiner offered Soldier Hollow’s growing youth programs and numbers of recreational skiers. This year, he said there are over 600 kids competing through Soldier Hollow, and the venue counted over 35,000 skier visits last year.
By hosting international and national competitions in recent years, he said the venue has built a network of volunteers and partnerships with local businesses.
The committee has its sights set on hosting either in 2030 or 2034. With the Summer Games booked for Los Angeles in 2028, it sees geopolitical barriers to hosting in 2030.
On one hand, according to Bullock, the IOC may not want the U.S. to host two Olympics and Paralympics in a row. It could also put Utah at a disadvantage for bringing in sponsorship dollars to pay for the events.
On the other hand, Utah may end up being the most qualified host for the 2030 Games, depending on what the cities in Canada and Japan have to offer.
“I think given that L.A. has the games in ‘28, if either Vancouver or Sapporo puts together a viable bid, they will win over us, but then we’ll happily take ‘34,” Bullock said.
Bullock said the IOC will announce in December which cities are still under serious consideration to host in 2030, then make a final decision by October 2023.
Salt Lake City, Vancouver and Sapporo have all hosted Winter Olympics before.
“I’m not sure they’ve got viable bids,” Bullock said. “We’ll see. I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance we end up with ‘30.”
On Wednesday night, he said Vancouver still needed official support of the province of British Columbia as a financial guarantor. Thursday afternoon, the Associated Press reported the province elected not to support Vancouver’s bid for the 2030 Games.
Meanwhile, Sapporo is dealing with a bribery scandal over the Tokyo 2020 Games. In August, a Sapporo executive for the Tokyo Olympics was arrested for suspicion of bribery.
Bullock said Utah’s prior experience playing host, as well as survey results that say 80% of the public support Utah doing so again, means the committee is full steam ahead for whichever year may work out.
