The summer Olympics get underway this week in Paris. The opening ceremonies will take place on Friday, but another celebration will begin Wednesday morning.
The International Olympic Committee will announce the host of the 2034 Winter Games and all eyes will be on Salt Lake City, Utah.
It’s been over 20 years since Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Games and more than a decade since it started working to host another.
Over the last three decades, Terrence Burns has worked on 14 different Olympic bids and six have been successful.
He points to the work done by entrepreneur Fraser Bullock and his team in hopes of bringing the Olympics back to Utah.
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“It takes a long time to put that together — so you never see that. Frankly, as an Olympic fan, what it took to win the Olympic Games, it’s kind of like a duck. You just see it going across the water and you don’t see how furiously its legs are kicking under the water,” Burns said. “The good news is that Salt Lake has everything that they need. They don’t have to build anything new. And that’s the new mantra with the IOC. If you have to build it, then don’t bother bidding. And you know, Salt Lake is the poster child for that.”
Burns notes that bringing the Olympic Games to the United States is different than any other country in the world.
“Our government, federal government, does not have a ministry of sport. We don’t have a cabinet-level position around sport. The federal government will not pour billions of dollars into Salt Lake the way the French government is pouring it into Paris,” he said. “In the United States, when we host an Olympic Games, it’s a purely funded and privately funded enterprise.”
The Winter Games in 2002 wound up turning a profit of $56 million — whether Salt Lake City makes money or not, to earn a second Olympics could change the city forever.
