By Kurt Repanshek, Snow Country Magazine, September 1995
Adapted For This Site By Jim Meloche
On the road to landing the Winter Games, Salt Lake City overcame the jinx of four failed bids, the vagaries of Olympic politics and accusations that Utah's capital is a repressed, teetotaling Mormon town incapable of toasting victory, let alone staging a two-week celebration worthy of the world.
Winning the Games cost the Salt Lake City Bid Committee, a private nonprofit outfit, nearly $7 million in a corporate funded campaign that spanned the globe. On June 16, when 89 International Olympic Committee members voted in Budapest, they awarded Salt Lake City 54 ballots and a first-round landslide victory. The other candidates were left in the dust. Sion, Switzerland, and Ostersund, Sweden, each received 14 votes. And after outspending the Salt Lake campaign by $2 million, Quebec got only seven.
Salt Lake City's victory rested not on smoke and mirrors, but on a conservative budget, completed venues and calculated risk. The IOC awards the Games to the candidate most capable of keeping its promises. So in 1989, with an eye toward hosting the 1998 Olympics, voters approved $59 million in state funds to build a bobsled track, luge run and ski jumps at the Utah Winter Sports Park. The goal was twofold: not only to win the Games, but to transform the state into a winter-sports training ground for aspiring Olympians.
Two years later, most of the venues were still in the blueprint stage, and Salt Lake lost by four votes to Nagano, Japan. But this time, IOC members saw most of the venues ready for competition and others well under way. That fact gave Utah an edge over its competitors, which for the most part offered only proposals. Quebec, for example, pledged $25 million to build a men's downhill course at Le Massif, a ski area 52 miles from the city. The project called for dumping dirt on top of the mountain to add 325 vertical feet.
Does this mean future Games will only go to those cities that build first and bid later? Probably not, says Anita DeFrantz, one of the United States' two IOC delegates. While Los Angeles had many venues in place when it won the 1984 Summer Games, Atlanta is still building some venues for 1996. "The bottom line," says DeFrantz, "is whether the IOC believes a city can do what they say they're going to do." Salt Lake promised, then delivered.
But heading into Budapest, Utah didn't rest on its technical laurels. At the request of the State Department, IOC delegates were wined, dined and indulged by U.S. embassies around the globe. And the top bid-committee members-president Tom Welch, chairman Frank Joklik and vice president Dave Johnson-visited so many countries that additional pages had to be glued into their passports.
During the 1994 Lillehammer Games, the bid committee spent roughly $200,000 to rent and transform a 260-year-old Norwegian farmhouse into a restaurant stocked with food and chefs from Utah. Such luminaries as Norway's King Harald V, Prince Albert of Monaco and the crown prince of Kuwait stopped by for a bite of lobster and some porterhouse steak. And in case any of the dignitaries were Niners fans, San Francisco quarterback Steve Young was on hand to serve some small talk. Young graduated from Utah's Brigham Young University-yes, he's related-and is a friend of the Welch family.
In the final months of the campaign, all 95 IOC delegates were invited to view the Utah venues. Fifty-four accepted; they came in small groups that flitted from venue to venue in helicopter squadrons, stayed in top-notch hotels and posed in Park City with U.S. Ski Team members. The Chilean delegate, an equestrian, was ushered to Park City to watch a cutting-horse demonstration, while the Ecuadoran delegate, a dog breeder, was met by school children and their pet hounds. Overall, it cost the bid committee an average of $15,000 to bring each delegate to Utah.
During the IOC visits, bid committee members did their best to address the "Mormon question." The church has its headquarters in Salt Lake City and casts a conservative shadow over the state: Devout Mormons shun caffeine, tobacco and alcohol and refrain from work on Sundays. Indeed, the sentiment in Salt Lake was that if the Games were lost, fault might lie with the Mormons and the state's byzantine blue laws. Liquor is served only in restaurants and "private clubs:' which anyone can enter by buying a two-week "temporary membership" for a small charge. Not urprisingly, the bid committee was at pains to explain that Salt Lake City is far from dry. "If you can't get a drink in Salt Lake City," Joklik told The Associated Press, "you can't be very thirsty' "
That goes double for Park City, where most of the alpine events will be staged. Settled in the 1860s by silver miners seldom known to pass up a whiskey, Park City today has some 20 private clubs and a microbrewery. And in case any IOC delegates had doubts, World Cup downhill champ Picabo Street announced that Park City, long a stop on the World Cup circuit, is "one of the biggest parties" on the tour.
While the bid committee courted the world, a small but vocal opposition was organizing in Utah. The occasional car sported a "This is Not the Place" bumper ticker, and environmentalists raised concerns about how the Games might impact the Wasatch Range. But the most vocal contrarians have been Utahans for Public Spending, a grassroots group that wants the Olympics to be a privately funded affair. The coalition has launched a petition drive to place a "no more public funds" referendum on the 1996 election ballot. Even if the referendum succeeds, the Games should not be affected. The bid committee repeatedly has promised that its $798 million budget-which contains a $120 million contingency fund for unexpected expenses-can be built entirely on sponsorships, licensing and television rights, ticket sales and other revenue-raising programs. And while the budget projects TV rights to generate $313 million, rights to the 1998 Nagano Games sold for $375 million. That sum will likely be the starting point for Salt Lake's negotiations, and it may well go higher.
The budget also includes $59 million to pay back taxpayers for the state-funded venues, and another $40 million to operate them for years to come. Overall, Olympic-related business is expected to generate $1.7 billion for Utah's economy.
By the time the bid committee arrived in Hungary last June, there was little need for last-minute politicking. A Salt Lake win seemed all but certain, yet Welch was jittery anyway: He remembered the Nagano upset all too well. Heading into Budapest, he warned that if Salt Lake lost again, the city wouldn't soon be back before the IOC. "We'll let someone else take the baton,” he told The Associated Press. "We'll leave it to another time, another generation."
On the day of the vote, a crowd of 40,000 gathered in downtown Salt Lake City to watch the announcement broadcast live on an enormous television screen. They didn't have long to wait: The IOC's vote was uncommonly quick, and Salt Lake became the first city in 30 years to win the Games on a first ballot involving more than two cities. Victory in hand, the jubilant bid committee must now turn its attention to negotiating TV rights, signing sponsors and polishing venues.
And, of course, enjoy a bit of well-deserved gloating. The state's license plates, which already boast "The Greatest Snow on Earth," may soon be emblazoned with five Olympic rings.
Excerpted From Snow Country Magazine, September 1995