2002 olimpic games

Higher in the hills, the US national freestyle team is training, along with the Australian development team. He looks out on the slopes from a meeting room walled by windows. According to Hilton, the venues have doubled the participation from 10 years ago. Now they get , visits a year at the Park, and half a million at the Olympic Oval in Kearns.

But does all this participation bring in revenue? The venues are subsidized by a 76 million dollar endowment left after the games — a fund that was diminished when the markets crashed in The Legacy Foundation is drawing on that endowment to make up a 4. Hilton estimates the venues have about a year life expectancy at the current spend rate. The foundation is trying to find a model that will work in perpetuity without cutting programs. So if the venues are well-used but losing money - what did Utah really gain from the Olympics?

I remember. Tourism officials will tell you, that brand adds up to real dollars. She said tourism spending has gone up 2 billion dollars in the 10 years since the Olympics. And also foreign visitation has increased steadily. It hasn't hurt to have Delta put in the international flight to Paris. You've got a massive construction now that is changing the way people live and enjoy the city. In the end, most people I talked to said that hosting the Olympics was a net gain for Utah.

Many people contributed with time, money, and energy to building up the image of Salt Lake as an Olympic city. Ten years later, Utahns find themselves reinvesting to keep that image alive. In the early 90's, a tourist from Germany was riding a ski lift in Park City as he confidently proclaimed that Utah would never host the Winter Olympics.

Less than ten years later, Salt Lake City welcomed the world for the Games. In the process, the way the world sees Salt Lake City has changed.

Just as important, the way Utahns see themselves as also evolved. While Mitt Romney saw his job as primarily to get the Winter Games on a sound financial footing, he was also challenged from time to time by a perception that he - and the organizing committee he led - was dominated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Romney tried to counter the perception that these would be the "Mo-lympics" with a glass of champagne.

Actually, he was drinking orange juice, but sparkling wine filled every other glass at a news conference in March of Romney proposed a toast. I toast the unity they represent in our community. And I toast also the contributions of the many faiths, the many ethnic groups and the many individuals which combined - will combine - to host great winter games in ," Romney said.

There were reasons Romney needed to counter that perception, and not just prejudice or misunderstanding from outsiders. Candy Thomson, a sports reporter for the Baltimore Sun, visited Utah several times in the run-up to the games. She found herself being escorted on a press tour by a group calling itself the Utah Media Center, which turned out to have close ties to the church.

It was a very strange day and it became clear that we weren't going to get our venue tours or anything else. They wanted to take us all to Mormon businesses. And so the reporter and photographer for the Seattle Times and I literally got out at a street corner, got out of the bus, and said We're not going any further. Bye,'" she says. Otterson declined an interview for this story.

Thomson says her next bus tour of the city was very different. As the games got closer and the competition finally began, Thomson says the best ambassadors Utah ever had weren't the ones seen on TV. Instead, it was the army of volunteers who saw to the needs of athletes, spectators and reporters - doing everything from making photocopies to providing aspirin and Pepto-Bismol.

And, she says, they stepped in on other occasions where they were needed. I can tell you that, up at, I believe it was the bobsled run, we needed help with a translation and a volunteer stepped up and did a spot-on job. It was just fun to enjoy it with the volunteers," she says. The volunteers' reward for their service included a distinctive parka that became a trophy in the coming years.

Sandy Kellogg was wearing hers when she came to the ceremony last week to re-light the Olympic flame at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Kellogg says she was excited to hear Governor Gary Herbert announce his plan to take a look at hosting the games a second time. So yes, I would volunteer again. First time or second time, though, the idea seems just plain dumb to Steve Pace. He lives in Utah because he likes to ski, and he was among the few voices in the community opposed to hosting the Winter Olympics.

I think it's pretty nice as-is," he says. Whether Utahns feel good about themselves is less critical to the Utah Travel Council than the attitudes held by potential visitors. Director Leigh von der Esch says they've tried to quantify those perceptions in recent years.

And now, the people in our surveys about image, those numbers about Utah's exciting, Utah has cultural diversity, Utah has an entertainment scene, all are now over 4. So you can see that the image, just since the last six years has changed. But it was really teed up by the Olympics in ," she says. But some perceptions are just hard to shake, Mitt Romney's champagne toast notwithstanding. I think that's been unfair. In the end, it's clear the perception of Utah is changing as a result of the Winter Olympics, though perhaps not as dramatically as it did for one man who didn't know Governor Mike Leavitt was standing right behind him as the fireworks went off.

Leavitt told his story to the crowd assembled to light the flame for the 10th anniversary of the games. And he said, "Governor, I was against this and I was wrong. As Mitt Romney campaigns for the Republican Presidential nomination, he often tells audiences that he saved the Olympic games.

While many believe Romney played an important role delivering the games in Salt Lake, not everyone labels him as a savior. I listen to these debates and it just makes me cringe not only because there was no saving that was necessary, but he really is robbing Utahns of the accolades. At the time, the games were suffering from the aftermath of a bribery scandal and a projected million dollar deficit, but Bullock says the desperate shape of the organizing effort was exaggerated. The bribery scandal did present an image problem for the games in Then Utah Governor Mike Leavitt was determined to find the right person to lead the games out of doubt and into success.

A person who could turn the Olympics process itself around from just a dollar and cents point and then a person who raise and reignite the Olympic spirit again in Utah. Mitt Romney had lost a Massachusetts Senate race five years before to Ted Kennedy, but he had a reputation as a corporate turnaround guy.

As he accepted the job to lead the games, Romney emphasized that he would move forward with is role stressing moral and fiscal discipline. Romney got to work wooing corporate sponsors and repairing the image of the games.

After accepting the job, Fraser Bullock worked alongside Romney every day for the next three years. And he turned what was a cost center into a profit center and that message permeated throughout our entire organization because we were poor.

Former Utah Senator Bob Bennett remembers Romney bringing both his business sense and political connections to the job. The materials contained on this Site are protected by applicable copyright and trademark law.

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