PARK CITY, Utah — The Utah Olympic Park is where dreams came true in 2002, and is the same place where dreams and golden stories will be shared 32 years later.
"To have the opportunity to make your first Olympics in front of your family and friends that know your story was exhilarating, I can't even put a word that would describe what that feeling was," shared Ogden's Bill Schuffenhauer, a bobsled Olympian who won silver for the U.S. during the 2002 Games.
Over two decades ago, the park hosted the bobsleigh, luge, Nordic combined, skeleton and ski jumping events.
So what needs to be done at Utah Olympic Park and the other 12 facilities that will be home to the world's greatest athletes when they return to the Beehive State?
The short answer? Not a whole lot.
"We haven't waited to getting an award of a Games and then having to spend a lot of money, we've actually been maintaining it over the years as the need has come due," explained Colin Hilton, the CEO of the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation.
All the 2002 venues are actively used throughout the year. They include Rice-Eccles Stadium, the Delta Center, Salt Palace Convention Center, Ice Peaks Arena in Provo, the Maverik Center, and a few ski resorts: Deer Valley, Park City Mountain, and Snowbasin.
There will also be a new venue: "Block 85," which will hold the Big Air competitions in both skiing and snowboarding on a portable scaffold structure in the lot northeast of the Delta Center.
"Most of the work is on what we call the temporary overlay," added Hilton. "We'll end up creating seating and standing locations for up to 15,000 or more spectators, here to watch Ski Jumping events during the 2034 games."
In Park City, some of the other improvements include updating the shading system and lighting over the bobsled track. Down the road at the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center, the plan is to finish some snow-making systems way ahead of 2034.
Hilton said that other plans are in store for the Utah Olympic Oval where the fastest skaters on ice will go for gold.
"For the Olympic oval, we put a new roof on about 4 years ago, that was probably the biggest improvement along with some refrigeration system improvements. So there's not a lot to be done there."
In the new cost-efficient era of the Olympics, not having to build new venues to host the Games was a huge selling point for Utah.
"A key piece of our competitive advantage in the bid were the venues," said Jeff Robbins, President and CEO, Utah Sports Commission. "We've got world class venues that are already being utilized. We're hosting major global sporting events."
The short distance between all the proposed venues also made Utah's bid so attractive.
"Utah being more compact as far as location makes it so much easier," said Schuffenhauer. "A good example in 2006 [Torino, Italy], during their Olympics, we had to travel almost sometimes 3 hours just to get to a facility in some cases, so it made it really difficult to plan in time how you're going to go to practice, when you're going to warm up, competitions. And so having all this right here is phenomenal."
The venues do more than just train and host, they inspire as anyone can come by to watch and participate.
"There's not a lot of facilities where you have that level of access," shared gold medalist freestyle aerial skier Ashley Caldwell. "For us, its super inspiring because being an Olympic athlete is challenging day in and day out. It's rough, you have your ups and downs, and to have people here cheering you on can really change a training session."
Even a decade out, as Utah and Salt Lake City growing and change, who knows if even more venues will exist in 10 years.
"Looking at the future, what things can we embrace that are different," asked Robbins. "We could even have some great venues that evolve, that we were not aware of or we didn't know."
Up in Weber County, Snowbasin Resort announced shortly after the IOC's awarding of the games to Utah that it will be the host of the downhill skiing events in 2034, which it also did in 2002.
