Salt Lake City will host the Winter Olympics, if not in 1998, then early in the 21st century, according to an International Olympic Committee leader and key figure in the Winter Olympics movement.
If Utah organizers fail to obtain the 1998 Winter Olympics, the U.S. Olympic Committee, which elected Salt Lake City its Winter Games bid city in June, has pledged to support Utah in another bid for the 2002 Games.Outgoing IOC vice president Marc Hodler, in San Juan for the 95th Session of the IOC, said Friday if Salt Lake City continues bidding for the world's greatest winter sporting event, one day it will host it.
"If Salt Lake City is proposed again by the U.S. Olympic Committee, I'm quite certain they will get the Games. I don't know when - maybe 2002, maybe 2006," said Hodler, also president of the International Ski Federation and seen as a key figure in the selection of Winter Olympics host cities.
Six other cities are unofficially bidding for the 1998 Games - Nagano, Japan; Jaca, Spain; Ostersund, Sweden; Sochi, USSR; Queenstown, New Zealand; and Aosta, Italy. More cities could enter the race before the April 1990 deadline.
USOC President Robert Helmick said Salt Lake City could find support as an international bid city even beyond 2002.
"Salt Lake City is going forward building very important training facilities and will become a winter sports training center in the United States," he said.
"I would predict that when the decision (on another U.S. bid city) comes up again in eight years there will be cooperative support by our winter athletes for Salt Lake," he said.
Support from winter athletes played an important role in Salt Lake City's successful attempt to become the U.S. bid city for the 1998 Winter Olympics.
"Salt Lake City will host the Winter Olympics," Helmick added.
Utahns must first approve the Olympics in a November referendum. But if the state gives its nod, organizers must begin building Olympic facilities, including a bobsled-luge run and speedskating rink, under a USOC requirement known as the 18-month rule.
Helmick said the USOC has little need for another winter sports training center in the western United States other than Salt Lake City.
While Hodler confidently predicted the Olympics would one day come to Utah, other IOC members were loathe to identify a leader in the host city selection process.
"It's still to early," said IOC member Chiharu Igaya, a Japanese skiing medalist.
Japan's city bidding for the 1998 Winter Olympics, however, said it was the leader in the competition to host the Games.
Asked if Nagano was a frontrunner in the IOC campaign, Nagano Winter Olympics Bidding Committee Vice President Soichiro Yoshida said, "at this moment, yes, but that doesn't mean anything to us - things change."
Yoshida said he spends three weeks of every month traveling throughout the world promoting Nagano as an Olympic site.
Igaya downplayed Yoshida's confidence, saying Nagano has poor name recognition among IOC members.
"Salt Lake City is a well-known city in the world, whereas - how many people do you expect know the name of Nagano," he said.
Tom Welch, chief executive officer of the Salt Lake City Winter Games Organizing Committee and in San Juan to lobby IOC members, said he is pleased with Salt Lake City's outlook on the campaign to host the Games.
"I'm not uncomfortable as to where we're at at this point in the campaign. But the place I wouldn't want to be is where Nagano is," he said, explaining that IOC members could be quick to find fault with the leading city in the bid.
For example, Sophia, Bulgaria, was considered a shoe-in to host the 1994 Winter Olympics but lost to Lillehammer, Norway, on the first vote taken by the IOC.
"Everybody last time thought it was Sophia," said Hodler, "and Sophia was voted out first."
"My explanation, merely joking, is that the IOC was in favor of Sophia, but their wives were not in favor of going to Sophia. It's not really a shopping center, you know," Hodler added.
Other factors that could influence the IOC include the September 1991 decision on which city should host the 1996 Summer Olympics. Atlanta is one of five international cities bidding for the Games.
Choosing Atlanta might dissuade the IOC from choosing another U.S. city for the next Winter Olympics, Welch said. "The summer Games next year are going to be instrumental in what happens to our candidacy," he said.