SALT LAKE CITY — Ahead of a critical visit by the International Olympic Committee, state leaders acknowledged the need to prepare more for what it will take to host the 2034 Winter Games.
"We're going to show Utah at its best," Fraser Bullock, the head of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games, told FOX 13 News on Friday.
IOC officials will visit Utah next week to personally see proposed venues. Salt Lake City is already the IOC's "preferred host" for the 2034 Games, but a successful visit next week will help cement the bid. The IOC is expected to formally name Salt Lake City the host city when they meet in Paris on July 24.
"We are so ready. We’ve been planning for this. When they have the opportunity to experience the people and the beauty and the mountains here? That’s going to speak for itself," Bullock said.
But at a panel discussion put on by the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Institute on Friday, state leaders and those who helped stage the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City urged preparation now for 2034.
"The value of the Olympics to the state the 10 years in advance of the games, during which there is a huge amount of back-pressure that will allow you to get a lot of things done that you could never get done in their absence," said former Utah Governor Mike Leavitt. "Look at I-15 as an example."
The two big items identified as necessary to build up for: transportation and security.
"Our transportation infrastructure has to improve," said Rep. Jon Hawkins, R-Pleasant Grove, who runs Olympic-related bills for the Utah State Legislature's Republican supermajority.
Sen. Mitt Romney, who led the Salt Lake Olympic Committee in 2002, said investments in public transit will be necessary to get everyone around. He also said security will cost billions, but the federal government is expected to cover a lot of that.
Utah's junior senator joked that people often asked him if hosting an Olympics was like hosting a Superbowl.
"I laughed because it’s like 50 Superbowls," he told the crowd, adding that a Superbowl is one day in one stadium, where an Olympics lasts 17 days in numerous venues.
"A Superbowl is easy. Not even a comparison. What is done in an Olympics is a massive undertaking," he said.
But Bullock said there is also opportunity.
"We’ll get through all the challenges, we’ll knock them down one after another, but then it presents that opportunity for us to do something special. Not only for our community, but the entire world," he said.
