Salt Lake City will be an Olympics host again after the IOC formally awarded the 2034 Winter Games to the United States bid on Wednesday, after a power move by Olympic officials who want to shut down a U.S. federal investigation of suspected doping by Chinese swimmers.
The capital city of Utah was the only candidate after the International Olympic Committee gave Salt Lake City exclusive negotiating rights last year in the process that was fast-tracked for 2034.
The campaign team presenting the bid on stage to IOC members included the Governor of Utah Spencer Cox, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Alpine ski great Lindsey Vonn. Back home, a 3 a.m. public watch party gathered to see a broadcast from Paris.
Before the vote, Cox agreed to pledges demanded by IOC leaders. The Olympic officials inserted a clause in the host city contract that said local officials must work with current and future U.S. presidents and members of Congress “to alleviate your concerns” about the federal investigations into doping.
What was set to be a simple coronation of Salt Lake City became tangled up by the IOC. President Thomas Bach is angry that the FBI is investigating the World Anti-Doping Agency’s decision to accept China’s explanations for positive drug tests of 23 swimmers before the Tokyo Olympics.
The IOC got promises from U.S. Olympic officials and Utah contingent to accept a new clause that lets the Olympic body terminate Salt Lake City’s deal if the authority of WADA was undermined.
It was an unprecedented move by the IOC that seemed to send a message the FBI should back away from the Chinese swimmers’ case. It can be investigated in the U.S. under federal legislation named for a whistleblower of Russian state doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
“We will work with our members of Congress,” Gov. Cox said ahead of the 2034 vote, “we will use all the levers of power open to us to resolve these concerns.”
Salt Lake City’s final approval came in an 83-6 vote by IOC members that bring back the Winter Games 32 years after first hosting in 2002. Tight security surrounded those Olympics, the biggest international sports event hosted by the U.S. following the Sept. 11 attacks five months earlier.
The 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games are part of Olympics lore for the bid bribery scandal that emerged in 1998 of IOC members seeking and getting favours from campaign officials. It led to sweeping anti-corruption reforms at the IOC.
For its second turn Salt Lake City will get almost 10 full years to prepare — the longest lead-in for a modern Winter Games — amid longer-term concerns about climate change affecting snow sports and reducing the pool of potential hosts.
Salt Lake City opted to target 2034 and so avoided potential commercial and logistical clashes with the 2028 Summer Games being hosted by Los Angeles.
In a separate decision earlier in Paris, the 2030 Winter Games was awarded — with conditions — to France for a regional project split between ski resorts in the Alps and the French Riviera city Nice.
That project needs official signoff from the national government being formed, and the Prime Minister yet to be confirmed, after recent elections called by President Emmanuel Macron. He helped present the 2030 bid Wednesday to IOC members. —PARIS (AP)
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Story by GRAHAM DUNBAR | Associated Press
