Will the Winter Olympics be rotated between Salt Lake City and other permanent locations?

As global warming continues to heat up the planet, Utah is expected to still get cold enough to keep hosting the Olympics for at least another 16 years after a 2034 Winter Games. So does that mean the International Olympic Committee will keep bringing the Winter Games back to the Beehive State?

Not so fast.

The IOC has yet to propose a plan to rotate the Winter Games among locations deemed climate reliable into the future, even though the Switzerland-based organization’s leaders delayed a decision on advancing bids in December 2022 so that and other issues related to the impact of climate change could be considered.

Instead, a year later they bought more time to think about a new system for siting Winter Games by lining up likely hosts through at least 2038.

Late last year, the IOC Executive Board named Salt Lake City the preferred host for 2034, and gave the same designation to France’s French Alps bid for 2030. Switzerland was granted a new, exclusive “privileged” status for the 2038 Winter Games and Sweden, once seen as a front-runner, will remain in talks to host in the future.

The final vote confirming the hosts for the 2030 and 2034 Winter Games is set for July 24, a date that’s celebrated as Pioneer Day in Utah, at the annual meeting of the full IOC membership, being held in Paris ahead of the start of the 2024 Summer Games.

The IOC delegation that visited Utah earlier this month to tour venues declared what they’d viewed as a “role model,” citing a single athlete village at the University of Utah no more than an hour away from ready-to-go competition sites as well as plans for more events in downtown Salt Lake City, including big air skiing and snowboarding on a massive temporary jump.

But when asked if that meant Salt Lake City could become a regular Olympic host, the answer suggested that won’t be decided anytime soon.

“You’re totally right, but we have to think of the constraints of the climate change. This will be a great challenge for us, which partner for the future will be reliable to organize Winter Games,” said Austrian IOC member Karl Stoss, chairman of the Future Host Commission that will report its findings on both preferred hosts to IOC leaders in June.

Repeating previously announced data, Stoss said the IOC is “quite sure we could do it here until 2050, with all the climate reports we read. But we have to think a little bit longer distance. What happens in 2060 and 2070? So this is the challenge, what we have to think about. But it is a very nice challenge for us and we take it.”

There seems to be no hurry to complete a study of how Utah’s climate would fare beyond 2050. Fraser Bullock, president and CEO of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games that’s behind the bid, said the study was paused last fall after it became clear “significant interest in the prospect of several Games into the future” had developed.

When the climate change concerns were raised a year and a half ago, the other contenders in the race were Sapporo, Japan; and Vancouver, Canada; but both bids faltered due to a lack of public support. By last fall, three new bids had emerged, from France, Switzerland and Sweden.

“I think right now the pipeline is healthy for the Winter Games. Therefore, postponing this analysis and work makes sense for now,” Bullock said. The possibility of a permanent rotation of Winter Games sites never came up during four days of discussions with the IOC in Utah, he said.

And it will likely be a while before the IOC tackles it again, maybe even a decade.

“The IOC needs to continue developing its strategy in a world with climate change, so it would be my guess that conversation will be re-engaged sometime over the next 10 years,” Bullock said, perhaps before the 2034 Winter Games “because at that point in time, 2050 is not that far away.”

‘Not a feasible blueprint anymore’

There’s been no slowdown, however, in speculation about the Olympics returning to Utah more than once .

On Wednesday, The New York Times-owned sports site, The Athletic, posted a story titled, “With Winter Olympics host options dwindling, Salt Lake City is lined up for 2034 — and maybe beyond.” that cited three-time Olympic medalist Lindsey Vonn’s support for making Utah a permanent host.

The now-retired champion alpine ski racer, a member of the Salt Lake City-Utah bid committee, was described as believing “the model for sustainability for the spectacle held every four years is to move toward a rotational approach” and saying that Salt Lake City, where she skied in her first Olympics in 2002, should be on top of the list.

“I think in this day and age, it’s not a feasible blueprint anymore,” Vonn told The Athletic about continuing to search for new Winter Games sites. “We need to have a more sustainable option, and I think Salt Lake is the best Olympic option that is available to the world right now.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox would agree. In March, the governor told reporters he’d heard talk the IOC could, in the next few years, designate “a set group of cities that host the Olympics so that every 20 years, maybe, or every 16, we come back to these host cities, and Salt Lake City will be one of those.”

The state “could host the Olympics next year if we had to and that changes the equation,” Cox said, despite struggles to attract bidders.

“I promise you that if every country had the infrastructure that we have, they would see it as a smart investment,” the governor said. “The reason that some countries have decided not to do it is because they have to build all of these venues. And that’s very expensive, and then the venues don’t get used, and they end up getting torn down. And that’s clearly a waste.”

Will the Olympic selection process stay the same?

But Robert Livingstone, the producer of the Toronto-based GamesBids.com who raised the question about whether the IOC intended to keep coming back to Salt Lake City, said he doesn’t expect an official rotation system to be put in place even though climate change is shrinking the pool of Winter Games locations.

“I think it will be more like, ‘There are limited options, so which one are we going to pick next,’” Livingstone said., basically the same system in place under the new, less formal bid process that looks to the Future Host Commission’s evaluation.of a site’s readiness to host. “So Salt Lake City, I’m sure, will come up a lot.”

He cited logistical issues with naming permanent sites, such as the impact of changing government leadership or unforeseen circumstances. Also, should what Livingstone said has “alway been this sort of theoretical thing” become reality, places that aren’t ready to bid, like Ukraine, which had sought the 2030 Winter Games before being invaded by Russia, would be shut out.

Bullock said Salt Lake City would be a go-to for the IOC beyond 2034 even if there’s not a formal list of permanent hosts.

“Whether it’s a defined rotation or selection based on the criteria of existing venues and being climate reliable, Salt Lake would figure into the potential mix either way, long term,” the bid leader said, since Utah can offer both of those elements far into the future.

“Climate compatibility is only one component,” Bullock said of the IOC regularly returning to previous hosts. “It’s also very strongly focused on sustainability, which means (using) existing venues and not building new venues. Based on that factor as well, combined with climate change, you get a diminishing list of candidates.”

There would be further public discussion before Salt Lake City would pursue joining that list for any additional Winter Games, he said, adding, “we’re already planning that down the road, sometime in the future, we might yet again have the opportunity to host the Games.”

The latest version of what had been a $2.45 billion privately funded budget for hosting in 2034, expected to be disclosed before the IOC vote, includes “enough to replenish the endowment for the Olympic Legacy Foundation to take care of those venues long into the future. That would then put us in a great position for potential rotational Games,” he said.

University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank, the author of several books about the Olympics, isn’t surprised the IOC is longer in any rush to consider naming permanent hosts. Now, with potential hosts in place through 2038, he sees little chance of any action on a rotation system before then.

“All they’ve done is sort of very vaguely talked about this as a possibilty, without really any commitment. My take is they should have made this decision previously. Because to me it seems inevitable,” Burbank said. “Why they continue to delay and pretend like, ‘Oh yes, everybody wants the Olympics and we can go anywhere in the world,’ I don’t get that.”

Especially given the IOC’s new focus on sustainability that encourages Games hosts to use temporary or existing facilities for competitions, even if they’re located in another country. That’s what the French Alps bid for 2030is proposing to do for long-track speedskating events since France doesn’t have an indoor ice oval.

Sticking to the handful of hosts like Salt Lake that already have and maintain the necessary venues “is the only way they can actually do something that would at least appear to be more sustainable,” Burbank said.

During the recent overhaul of the selection system, the professor said the IOC chose not to give up “this idea of having a whole string of cities who would be in some way, shape or form competing against each other to get the Games. That’s the process they like.”

It comes down to the IOC enjoying the attention that brings, Burbank said.

“They want to be invited places. They want to go there and have everybody wine and dine them. Absent that, it’s just not as much fun,” he said, adding, “I personally think it’s less about influencing sport than it is more about their own sense of their importance.”

What makes Utah’s 2034 Winter Games bid a ‘role model’

Stoss said all of the IOC members serving on the Future Host Commission “have the same understanding. We are looking for the best organizer for Olympic Games.” The Salt Lake City-Utah bid, he said, “is really an excellent example. You are unique in the world.”

But in his answer to the question of whether Salt Lake City would keep hosting given those accolades, Stoss made it clear that calling Utah “a role model for all the other future hosts” speaks to the state’s ability to attract new interest — and new bidders — to the Winter Games.

“We have to think about how to bring winter sports to all of the continents, not just here in the Americas,” he said, citing plans to hold more Olympic activities in downtown Salt Lake City in 2034 as an example of taking “sport to the people” that other would-be hosts should follow.

Another way for Utah to show how it should be done, Stoss said, is by coming up with new sports for the Winter Games, just as break dancing, also known as breaking, was added to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. No specifics were mentioned and new sports for 2034 likely wouldn’t be added anytime soon.

Breaking is “totally new. But this is sport for the young generation This is inspiring,” he said. “Maybe we could think about the same, not breaking in the snow, but what we could do to bring more of our young people to winter sport, to bring more nations and national Olympic committees to Olympic Winter Games.”