Every time I return to Salt Lake, I smile. – Apolo Anton Ohno
With the possible exception of Mitt Romney, you could make a strong case that no one associated with the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics vaulted more from anonymity to a first-name basis with the world than a young man with a cool goatee named Apolo.
Apolo Anton Ohno was 19 years old when he strapped on his skates at the brand-new Olympic Oval in Kearns and proceeded to win gold at 1,500 meters and silver at 1,000 meters in the relatively new (making just its fourth Olympic appearance) sport of short track speedskating, a blend of rugby, figure skating and train wrecks that spectators couldn’t turn away from.
Apolo became the first American male to win gold in an event that heretofore had been almost the exclusive domain of the South Koreans. He would go on to collect, in all, eight medals in three Olympic Games — two gold, two silver and four bronze — making him the single most decorated winter Olympian in U.S. history.
The international celebrity spawned by those Olympic appearances — along with six world championships that resulted in 21 medals, including eight gold — resulted in a best-selling book (“Zero Regrets”), sponsorships with companies ranging from McDonald’s to Coca-Cola to Omega watches, extensive humanitarian aid work, success as a motivational speaker and entrepreneur in a variety of businesses, and numerous television and movie gigs, including, in 2007, an appearance on “Dancing With the Stars,” where he paired with Utahn Julianne Hough and, of course, won the whole thing.
That it all started in Salt Lake is not lost on Apolo.
“Every time I return to Salt Lake, I smile,” he said this week from Los Angeles. “Olympism is in the air there and always will be. I have so much love for Utah and the people there who were just amazing to me. My memories of the Salt Lake Olympics are burned into my brain and my soul forever. It was wild how quickly my life changed in a matter of minutes.”
Commitments in Asia preclude him from joining the 15-year anniversary festivities this week in Utah, but Apolo assures he is never far from the Olympics. He has joined LA ’24, the group that is lobbying to hold the 2024 summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“Hopefully we can get the games back to Los Angeles,” he said. “I also hope we can get the games back to Salt Lake sometime in the near future. It makes so much sense. Everything’s already built and Salt Lake is such an amazing, majestic place.”