A famous tennis player, a former mayor, a bank chairman, a moviemaker and a former Pan American Games executive. And Tom Welch, the head of Salt Lake City's bid for the 2002 Winter Games.
They all have been nominated to the U.S. Olympic Committee's 101-member board of directors as representatives of the public sector. The six 4-year positions open in that area will be filled at a USOC meeting in October.The six names from a nominating committee, whose chairman is a USOC board member from the sport of figure skating, include some instantly recognizable names, such as tennis great Arthur Ashe and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young.
Ashe made news recently by acknowledging he is infected with the AIDS virus. Young is co-chairman of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, which will host the 1996 Summer Games.
The moviemaker on the list is Frank Marshall, an executive producer and director whose credits include such films as "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," some of which was shot in Utah.
The bank chairman is Frank McKinney Jr. of the BancOne Indiana Corp. of Indianapolis. Interestingly, he was succeeded in 1989 as head of an industry group by longtime Salt Lake Olympic booster Spencer Eccles of First Security Bank.
Sandy Knapp, now of Austin, Texas, is the former chief executive of the Indiana Sports Corp., which put on the Pan American Games in Indianapolis in 1987.
Knapp also was chairman of the USOC site selection committee in 1989 that judged Salt Lake City's ability to host a Winter Games against Denver; Anchorage, Alaska; and Reno/Tahoe.
A tireless promoter of Salt Lake City's effort to host an Olympics, Welch is more interested in how being on the USOC could help the bid than in who else has been nominated.
"It gives us an opportunity and a platform to continue to promote our community," Welch said, "not just the bid, but the development of winter sports."
Welch, who is expected to be named to the USOC along with the other five nominees at the October meeting in Miami Beach, said he hopes to persuade the USOC to hold one of its semiannual meetings in Salt Lake City next year.
The USOC already has named Salt Lake City as America's choice for the 2002 Winter Games. Salt Lake City had the same designation for the 1998 Winter Games, which were awarded to Nagano, Japan.
In exchange for the USOC's backing, the state agreed to spend some $59 million in tax money to build winter-sports facilities where Olympic athletes can train as well as possibly compete.
When Salt Lake City failed to win the 1998 Winter Games, the terms of that agreement had to be renegotiated by Welch and others after the USOC refused to help pay costs that were to have been covered by Olympic revenue.