Salt Lake City's official involvement in Olympic ceremony finally came to an end Thursday, nearly 3 1/2 years after it hosted the 2002 Winter Games.
A bicycle contingent led by Mayor Rocky Anderson completed Salt Lake City's last Olympic commitment as it delivered the city's Olympic message to the 2006 Winter Games host, Torino, Italy.
That's not to say this final step was easy. Anderson described it as "a minor miracle."
According to Olympic tradition, Salt Lake City leaders had to deliver a message of peace, youth and environment to Torino — about 5,400 miles away, as the crow flies — using environmentally friendly modes of transportation that didn't burn fossil fuels.
It meant bicycling the message to New York, sailing it to Brussels and bicycling it over the Alps to the northern Italian city.
One day on a steep climb though the French Alps, Anderson had to quit 10 kilometers from the summit and ride the rest of the way in a support van.
While some on the seven-member contingent — including Anderson's girlfriend Tracy Lyon, Deputy Mayor Rocky Fluhart and his wife Gretchen, Park City couple Bill and Celia Underwood and Avenues resident Sarah Wright — had trained for long, steep bike rides, Anderson hadn't.
Some team members "go up the steepest roads in the Alps like it's just good fun play for them while to me it seems like a matter of life and death sometimes," Anderson said from Italy in a telephone interview.
Another day, the biking party, unable to read French, took a wrong turn and biked 40 kilometers in the wrong direction.
Other times they would arrive in a quaint European village, bushed from a day of biking over 100 miles, only to find their hotel had no vacancies.
"The main thing was just working with the whole team to solve problems," Wright said. "Finding directions and figuring out routes and getting to places where we were going to stay and not having rooms."
Wright, who works with Utah Clean Energy, was invited to participate in the European leg of the journey because of her advocacy for cleaner fuels.
Anderson said it was important that he, as mayor, deliver the message personally to Torino Mayor Sergio Chiamparino. His presence underlined the importance of the message, which called for the international community to take action to solve problems of health care, poverty, human rights, climate change and genocide in developing nations.
"When you're discussing the need for international cooperation in meeting major human rights and medical challenges, especially in developing countries and also addressing a global environmental crisis like climate change and the need for countries to come together, I think it's important for the mayor to signify the fundamental importance of all of us working together to meet these challenges by putting in this sort of effort," he said.
The message, according to the group, was well received in Torino. As the Salt Lake contingent entered the city, they were greeted by Olympic volunteers, municipal leaders, a police escort and national and international media.
"They have just made us feel very honored and welcome," said Wright, who admitted she was once an Olympic-hater who didn't want the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.
"I was a skeptic that was definitely won over by the success of the Salt Lake Olympics," she said.
Lillehammer, Norway, host of the 1994 Winter Games, began the message-passing tradition by taking a message of peace, youth and the environment to 1998 host Nagano, Japan, which delivered a message to Salt Lake prior to the 2002 Games.
Local documentarian Mike Dunn followed Salt Lake City's message as it traveled from Utah to Torino and plans to release a documentary on the journey this fall.
The message left Salt Lake City via bicycle April 4. A separate group of cyclists took the message to New York, where it was put on a sail yacht for Brussels and was picked up by the European bike contingent. The trip cost $175,000 — $25,000 was funded by tax dollars and $150,000 by private donations.
Torino's XX Olympic Winter Games are scheduled for Feb. 10-26, 2006.
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com