IOC makes stops in Park City and Soldier Hollow
PARK CITY, Utah (ABC4 Sports) – As the dream of getting the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City becomes more a reality, members of the International Olympic Committee spent Thursday touring various potential Olympic venues
“It’s just incredible today to have the IOC here,” said Park City Mountain VP and CEO Deirdra Walsh. “The organizing committee, my team, to bring this to fruition and be able to look out at the mountains and see what’s possible here for the 2034 games, it’s just incredible.”
The day started at the Utah Olympic Park as IOC members saw the bobsled, luge and skeleton track, which is one of only three like it in North America, and still in use every day.
IOC members tour Utah Olympic venues
“It is incredible how you maintained all these venues since 2002,” said Karl Stoss, Chairman of the Future Host Commission. “This is one of our success stories I think in the IOC. We would like to build our legacy on the venues you had before.”
“That’s one of the great things we’ve been able to do is do the ongoing maintenance and upkeep of the facilities, as we do at most of our Olympic venues here,” said Collin Hilton, President of the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation. “So we don’t have any major improvements to do for gearing up for 2034.”
Then it was over to Park City Mountain to check out the halfpipe and slopestyle courses. That’s is where Olympic gold medalist and Park City native Ted Ligety learned how to ski as a kid, and he says he was inspired to become an Olympian watching the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah.
“To think about having the games here again in 2034, it’s such an amazing experience for the next generation of youth,” Ligety said. “But also we’ve built all these amazing facilities around those games that are still used today.”
“Today kids are training every day here,” added Fraser Bullock, President and CEO of the Salt Lake City Committee “They are future Olympians, and so that’s part of the games. It’s an entire system that these venues are not only kept up, they are used everyday.”
The tour wrapped up at Soldier Hollow to see the cross-country and biathlon courses with one of the IOC members taking a shot herself.
Downtown Salt Lake City ‘going gold’ for Olympic support
The topic of diversity was brought up at this morning’s Olympic Forum at the Eccles Theater downtown, and how ready Salt Lake City is to host the world again amid its everchanging demographic.
“It’s been almost an exponential increase,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall. “One in ten Utahns were diverse at that point in the 2002 games. But now we’re up to a quarter of all Utahns. That’s who we are to becoming, and how our economy is growing as well.”
“It is very, very important,” said Stoss about Utah’s diversity. “This is the way we have to show the world that sport is the bridge for peace.”
The IOC will conclude its tour of Olympic facilities Friday with stops at Snowbasin and the Olympic Oval in Kearns.
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