Looking to the future: Utah’s 2034 Winter Olympics
Oct 5, 2024, 4:00 PM | Updated: Oct 7, 2024, 11:17 am
The OIympic rings are displayed before a live watch party for the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee’s 2034 Winter Olympics bid held at the Salt Lake City and County Building in Washington Square Park on Wednesday, July 24, 2024, in downtown Salt Lake City. (Isaac Hale/Deseret News)
(Isaac Hale/Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Now that Utah will officially host the 2034 Winter Olympics, Utahns have many questions about how the state will accommodate the global event in 10 years.
Venues and athlete support
“In total, U.S. Ski and Snowboard supports about 250 athletes across those sports,” said Sophie Goldschmidt, CEO of U.S. Ski and Snowboard. “But [we] also have a purview for overseeing everything related to the sports in the U.S. — from the person who’s putting on skis or a snowboard for the first time, to the best athletes in the world.”
Will Utah utilize the same venues it created for the 2002 Olympics? The short answer — yes.
“The beauty of these games is that we’re not having to build very much from scratch,” said Goldschmidt. “From our headquarters up in Park City, Utah, to the Utah Olympic Park, also in Park City, where you can see athletes training every day in the pool. We’re pretty much ready now. ”
When it comes to venues, Goldschmidt explains alpine skiing will probably be up at Snow Basin, in addition to some of it at a new facility at the Utah Olympic Park in Summit County. She anticipates that moguls will make their return to Deer Valley Resort, and slopestyle and halfpipe will be seen at neighboring Park City Mountain.
Volunteering for the Utah Winter Olympics
When it comes to volunteers for the 2034 Games, Mari Riser with the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation says they’re looking for “technical volunteers.”
“They help with the timing, the scoring, at events such as the Biathlon range,” Riser said. “We have events throughout the next 10 years that volunteers can get experience with.”
The Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation organizes elite winter sports events, such as the World Cups and Championships at its venues. This includes Soldier Hollow Nordic Center for biathlon and Nordic skiing; Utah Olympic Oval for long and short-track speed skating; and the Utah Olympic Park for bobsled, skeleton, luge and ski jumping.
If you’re interested in learning to volunteer for events, you can get details on the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation’s website.
Transportation to and from Olympic venues
As the population continues to boom in Utah, traffic and transportation is a top priority for our state government and officials.
Jay Fox is the executive director of the Utah Transit Authority. He says there was already a mass overhaul planned, independent of the Olympics.
“We have a long-range transit plan and all the projects that we’re looking at that would benefit the 2034 Olympics are already in planning or development,” Fox said. “The beauty of getting out of the car is that you can literally get anywhere you need to go, particularly for the 2034 Olympics, entirely on mass transit.”
One essential project for UTA ahead of hosting not only the Olympic but the Paralympic games, too, is to replace the blue line light rail cars. They currently aren’t ADA-accessible.
