The speed-skating oval at the Oquirrh Park Fitness Center in Kearns is getting $2 million from the U.S. Olympic Committee to make sure it's ready for athletes to train there for the 2002 Winter Games.
The money will be used to maintain ice on the track year-round, as well as to add a second ice sheet inside the oval and new facilities for athlete training and equipment storage.The USOC is also coming up with about $1.4 million for the bobsled and luge track at the Utah Winter Sports Park near Park City, to build new start houses, workshops and storage areas and to shade the track from the sun.
The cross-country and biathlon competition site under construction in a section of Wasatch Mountain State Park near Midway, known as Soldier Hollow, will receive $70,000 to finish a 5-kilometer ski loop there this season.
The $3.5 million in grants to the Salt Lake Organizing Committee are from a USOC program created this year to boost the medal count at the 2002 Winter Games.
There's a total of $18 million in the Podium 2002 program, which also provides financial support for Olympic hopefuls and the national governing bodies of Olympic sports.
SLOC is spending $23.2 million to enclose the now-outdoor oval and $45 million for new ski jumps and other improvements at the sports park to ready those facilities for the Olympics.
But there's never been enough money in the organizing committee budget to prepare the facilities for athlete training. U.S. athletes hope to take full advantage of competing on their own turf in 2002.
That's also what the International Olympic Committee wants. Earlier this year, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch told both the organizing committee and the USOC they need to improve the U.S. medal count in 2002.