It's now or never for Salt Lake City's Olympic bid.
The surprise announcement this week that Salt Lake City won't bid again if the city is not selected by the International Olympic Committee to host the 2002 Winter Games is creating a new sense of urgency in the campaign.Salt Lake City is one of four cities still in the running for the 2002 Winter Games, along with Ostersund, Sweden; Quebec; and Sion, Switzerland. The IOC will name the host of the 2002 Winter Games in June.
A special IOC selection committee chose the four finalists Tuesday from among the nine cities competing. Eliminated were Graz, Austria; Poprad-Tatry, Slovakia; Sochi, Russia; Tarvisio, Italy; and Jaca, Spain.
"I think this is Salt Lake City's chance," a tired but happy Salt Lake Olympic Bid Committee President Tom Welch said in an interview before he left Switzerland on Wednesday morning.
"We ought to put our very best foot forward. If it doesn't happen . . . it may be, if we're not successful, for some a real sadness and for some, there'll be a celebration," he said.
The decision not to bid for the 2006 Winter Games if this bid fails was announced by Welch in response to a question at a press conference Monday. The reason, he said, was that the community cannot support another bid.
The 1998 and 2002 bids will end up costing more than $14 million, nearly all of it raised privately. The time has come to turn those resources over to other community needs, he said.
Welch, who because of a severe cold lost his voice repeatedly throughout the two-day meeting at IOC headquarters, said he prefers to think of Salt Lake City's last Olympic bid as an opportunity.
Anita DeFrantz, one of the two IOC members representing the United States, said the nation needs to rally around the bid. "It's time to really have the efforts of the city and the country supporting the bid," DeFrantz said.
Salt Lake City has tried four times for the Olympics, beginning in 1965 with a bid for the 1972 Winter Games. Nearly a decade later, Salt Lake City stepped in when Denver backed out of hosting the 1976 Winter Games.
The most painful loss, though, came in June 1991, when the IOC selected Nagano, Japan, over Salt Lake City by just four votes as the site of the Winter Games in 1998.
At the IOC headquarters here, there are many reminders of that decision. Even as the Utah delegation entered a meeting room to give a presentation on the bid to the IOC, television monitors replayed the Nagano announcement.
Salt Lake City's bid for 2002 will have a place in the Olympic Museum, however. Beginning in March, there will be photographs displayed from each of the four finalists, including a scene of Salt Lake City at night.
Between now and June, Welch said, Salt Lake City will strive to show the IOC how the commitments made in the 1998 bid to build facilities and provide infrastructure have been kept.
That strategy will emphasize the technical superiority that gave Salt Lake City its front-runner status in both the 1998 and 2002 campaigns, a strength conceded by the three other finalists and acknowledged in an IOC evaluation.
As one of the largest cities to bid for a Winter Olympics, Salt Lake City has much of the highways, hotels and other infrastructure needed to host the Games in place.
And taxpayers have invested $59 million in Olympic facilities, including a bobsled and luge run under construction near Park City and a speed-skating oval being built in Kearns.
Salt Lake City was the only bid city rated excellent in the report of the IOC Evaluation Commission, formed to scrutinize the technical details of each bid.
Thomas Bach, the IOC member from Germany who served as chairman of the evaluation commission, suggested the report can guide the four finalists as they enter the last stretch of the race.
"It highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the bids," Bach said. He said the four cities chosen were more ready to host the Winter Games than the five eliminated.
"The main difference is preparation. The first four are in the preparations a bit further than the others," said Bach, who as chairman had a vote on the 10-member special IOC selection committee that named the cities.
The selection committee reached its decision behind closed doors by consensus, Bach said, describing consensus as meaning no one raised serious objections to any of the four cities chosen.
Welch said the report will help focus the campaign. "It certainly will be a guiding light to us, because what it said is, our homework has been done, our facilities built and in place and all have been rated as excellent."
*****
Additional Information
Olympic visits
Schedule of IOC visits to the four bid cities
Sion, Switzerland Feb. 6-10
March 1-5
March 24-28
Ostersund, Sweden
Feb. 11-15
March 6-10
March 29-April 2
Quebec
Feb. 16-20
March 11-15
April 3-7
Salt Lake City
Feb. 21-25
March 16-19
April 8-12