Salt Lake City didn't just win, it won big.
For the first time ever, a city bidding for the Olympic Winter Games beat its competition in the first round of balloting by the International Olympic Committee.Tom Welch couldn't believe it. He stood on the stage of the Budapest Kongresszusi Kozport just after the 7:20 p.m. announcement Friday staring at a vote tally, too dazed to respond to the reporters asking if he was surprised.
"Yeah," he finally whispered.
The Salt Lake City Olympic Bid Committee came here expecting to bring the Olympics home barring an unforeseen disaster but never dared hope for such a decisive victory.
Fifty-four of the first 92 votes cast Friday afternoon went to Salt Lake City. Ostersund, Sweden, and Sion, Switzerland, each received 14 votes, and Quebec, Canada, just seven. Eighty-nine votes were valid, two were invalid and one was blank.
Only once before, when Mexico City was named the host of the 1968 Summer Games, has a city won a majority of votes on the first ballot. It's never happened in the 71-year history of the Winter Games.
This time, IOC members had long finished their work when IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch opened the envelope containing the results and announced the results.
"The International Olympic Committee has decided to award the organizing of the 19th Winter Games for 2002 to the city of Salt Lake City," Samaranch read.
That was the end of Salt Lake City's low-key demeanor, which bid committee strategists had stressed during one of their last sessions.
Amid the hollering and hugging, the two athletes there to back the bid, Olympic medalist skier Picabo Street and 10-year-old ice skater Cynthia Ruiz, climbed atop a table and jumped up and down until it collapsed.
All Gov. Mike Leavitt heard was a single syllable. "Sssss. . ..then the place exploded," Leavitt told the nearly 400 Utahns gathered at Budapest's most famous restaurant, Gundel, for a Western-themed victory party.
The Utah boosters, most of whom had to watch the announcement on television because seating was limited, made plenty of noise themselves throughout the evening. At midnight, many were still whooping it up at the party.
They couldn't keep from cheering while Leavitt, Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini and bid committee chairman Frank Joklik spoke, by telephone, to President Clinton, who was at a major economic summit in Canada.
"He sends his greetings and says, `On with 2002,' " Leavitt reported.
Corradini told the partygoers about a signal given to her by an unnamed IOC member just before Samaranch read the vote. He smiled, then gestured. But Corradini thought he was pointing toward Ostersund.
"Then he mouthed the words, `first round.' Then I knew we had it," the mayor said.
Although IOC members heard the numbers the same time as the bid cities, they knew a first-round victory had to mean Salt Lake City.
Their own evaluation commission had rated it the best of the nine cities originally in the race. Those findings were used to eliminate all but four cities in January.
"Salt Lake City was the favorite," IOC member Thomas Bach of Germany, head of the evaluation commission, said. "People didn't dare in the first round to vote for anyone else."
The rules of the IOC selection process sound simple enough. The first candidate to get a majority of votes wins. Until that happens, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated.
Enter politics. IOC members typically spread out their votes in the initial rounds of balloting, often to show support for a candidate city they really don't want to win.
Why? Sometimes it's to please the folks back home by voting for the "favorite son" candidate. Or even just to prevent the weaker candidates from being humiliated.
In 1991, Salt Lake City was nearly eliminated in the first round of voting for the 1998 Winter Games by so-called sympathy votes for Aosta, Italy. Salt Lake City, considered the strongest candidate, tied with the weakest.
The tie was broken, and Salt Lake City lost in the final round to Nagano, Japan, 46-42. After that, the rules were changed so IOC members no longer learned the results between rounds.
"Before, sometimes people voted for others and then the next time for the strongest. But there is a risk in that," said Anton Geesink, an IOC member from the Netherlands. "IOC members don't want to take that risk anymore."
An emotional Welch said the vote confirms what he has been hearing from IOC members throughout the four-year campaign. "They told us we were different as a city, and they'd be there for us. And they were," he said.
The work isn't over for Salt Lake City, of course. And former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who led that city's successful bid for the 1996 Summer Games, said there won't be any break.
"The morning after we won, there were three corporate headquarters that announced they were relocating (to Atlanta)," Young said. "It started right away. We never got a chance to catch our breath."
The choice of Atlanta over sentimental favorite Athens undoubtedly cost Salt Lake City the 1998 Winter Games. Young said Friday's vote gave Salt Lake City the victory it deserved.
"This was exactly as it should be. A landslide victory. Salt Lake earned it and deserved it," he said.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
How they voted
Total votes received by each city. There was only one round of votine.
SALT LAKE CITY 54
OSTERSUND 14
SION 14
QUEBEC 7
TOTAL 89
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Last time around
Four years ago, the IOC took five rounds to choose Nagano, Japan, as host of the 1998 Winter Games.
*-CITIES SALT LAKE OSTERSUND, NAGANO, JACA, AOSTA, TOTAL
ELIMINATED CITY SWEDEN JAPAN SPAIN ITALY VOTES
ROUND 1 15 18 21 19 15 88
ROUND 2 (1) 59 - - - 29* 88
ROUND 3 (2) 27 25 30 5* - 87
ROUND 4 29 23* 36 - - 88
ROUND 5 42* - 46 - - 88
(1) Vote required to break last-place tie in first round.
(2) Only 87 votes were returned in Round 3.