Cathy Priestner Allinger, the director of sports for the 2002 Winter Games, is moving to Torino, Italy, to take a top-level job with the organizing committee for the next Winter Olympics.
Allinger said Thursday she has been hired to oversee sports, venues, medical needs, doping control, national Olympic committee services and press operations for the 2006 Winter Games as a vice president of the Torino organizing committee.
Her new position means she'll have to step down as chief executive officer of the Utah Athletic Foundation, the organization created by lawmakers to run the ski jumps, bobsled track and speed-skating oval that were built for the Games with tax dollars.
"I had no intention of doing this. It was completely unsolicited and unexpected," Allinger said of her new job, first offered just days after she started work at the foundation last month.
She said she even turned down the Italian organizing committee twice but finally decided the opportunity was just too good for her and her family to pass up. Allinger's husband, Todd, a medical researcher, will also work for the organizing committee and at a local college.
The family, including son Colten, 13, expect to move to Italy in August. They have already rented a villa near the organizing committee offices in Torino, which is often referred to as Turin in the United States.
"In terms of personal growth and professional growth, it really is a plus for myself and my husband and Colten," Allinger said of the move. "We'll walk away fluent in Italian and having another Games under our belts."
Salt Lake City wasn't Allinger's first Olympic Games. A speedskater, she competed in the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan, and won a silver medal for her native Canada in the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria.
Allinger managed the speedskating oval for the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Canada, and later worked for the University of Calgary as general manager of the oval and as an associate director of athletics.
She was hired by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee in the fall of 1997 as director of ice sports. Allinger was promoted a year later to director of all sports, becoming the first woman to hold that position for an Olympics.
SLOC President Fraser Bullock said Allinger is "a marvelous talent. She did a fantastic job for us," he said, calling her selection by Torino organizers "quite a compliment to our organization and to Cathy."
The idea to hire Allinger apparently came after she and other SLOC leaders traveled to Italy this spring to share what they'd learned about putting on an Olympics. Bullock said he emphasized the need for an experienced staff.
Allinger will be the highest-ranking former SLOC official to join the Torino organizing committee although at least three former SLOC employees are already on the payroll. Allinger will report to Torino's chief operating officer, Marcello Pochettino.
Mark Lewis, the president of the Utah Athletic Foundation and the former head of the joint marketing arm of SLOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee, said Allinger will be missed. "Cathy's departure is a huge loss," Lewis said. "No ifs, ands or buts."
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