It wasn’t that long ago that Brad Wilson was in a crowded race to replace retiring Sen. Mitt Romney, hoping to head to Washington, D.C., after more than a dozen years in the Utah Legislature, including four as House speaker.
Wilson came in third in last year’s primary election but he’s still following in the footsteps of Romney, Utah’s 2002 Winter Games leader, as the CEO of the state’s next Olympics in 2034, responsible for running the day-to-day operations of the new organizing committee.
“Sometimes you win by losing. This is such a fun thing to be involved in,” a smiling Wilson said recently from behind a desk at his Farmington-based real estate development company that’s also serving as an Olympic office for now.
Trading his usual blazer for a navy blue Team USA fleece, the 56-year-old said it’s not a position he’d pictured for himself despite being involved in the bid effort as a state legislative leader. But Wilson said he’s grateful for the opportunity.
“Honestly, I feel like this is exactly where I’m supposed to be,” he said. Throughout the lengthy bid process, Wilson said he always believed that hosting the world again was “one of the most important things that this state is going to do ... and we’ve got to make sure that we do it right.”
So when Gov. Spencer Cox and Senate President Stuart Adams reached out to him last fall to see if he was interested in helping ensure the state had a bigger role in organizing the Games this time around, Wilson said he didn’t hesitate.
“Absolutely,” he told them. Initially, the discussions centered around serving as a vice chair of the organizing committee board, Wilson said, and “sort of evolved from there” to add the CEO job that for the next three years will be unpaid.
Steve Starks, the governor’s Olympics adviser and the CEO of the Larry H. Miller Company, is also a vice chair of the organizing committee board. Bid leader Fraser Bullock, the chief operating office in 2002 under Romney, is the board’s executive chair and president.
Romney was the face of the 2002 Games, named both president and CEO when he was brought in amid an international bribery scandal surrounding the cash and gifts handed out by Utah’s Olympic bidders.
For 2034, it’s Bullock that’s poised to be out front as the president of the board that has the final say about the organization of the Games. His role as executive chair is intended to give him latitude to be involved in operations as well.
The division of duties comes after the governor, who chose the Games leaders along with Senate President Stuart Adams and current Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, talked publicly last year about the need to put a succession plan in place for Bullock, who will turn 70 in April.
What is Wilson’s role in organizing the Games?
Wilson stopped short of saying he expects eventually to add the role as president.
“We’ll know more in three years,” he said, when a nationwide search is set to be launched for a paid CEO to serve through 2034. “I think that’s also a time when we’ll decide if the government structure is working the way we hoped it would.”
Sharing responsibilities is nothing new for him, Wilson said.
“My whole career, I’ve had kind of a partner. I’ve had a business partner for 25 years,” he said. “I was the speaker but you didn’t make any big decisions, you couldn’t, without the Senate president and the governor being on board, too.”
He said he typically talks with Bullock several times a day and has since last December.
“I know it’s hard sometimes for people to believe this, but I believe we get much better outcomes when you run certain operations this way,” Wilson said, adding, “I know people kind of want this to be more clear but it’s going to work just fine.”
Should he and Bullock disagree, Wilson said they’ll figure it out since “that’s the way good teams work together. If there’s any organization that needs to be able to demonstrate teamwork it should be an organizing committee. We’ve got one I think its going to be exemplary at that.”
That may mean Utahns see more of Wilson, while Bullock represents the state at the national and international levels. Bullock will be in Greece later this month to attend the International Olympic Committee meeting where a new IOC president will be elected.
Wilson’s plan is to stay on as CEO through 2034, but he said he wanted a chance to rethink the job once the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles are over and Utah is able to solicit sponsors and take other actions as the nation’s next Olympic and Paralympic host.
“I recommended for both my benefit and the benefit of the board that as we transition from this phase to the next phase that we pause and let me evaluate whether or not it’s something I want to continue to do and whether or not they think I’m the right person,” he said.
“So I’m going to go about doing my job the best I can and we’ll see,” he said. “Let’s, three years from now, just take a deep breath and say, does this still make sense for everybody. But I look forward to being involved and I think there’s a high probability that I’ll stay in this job.”
For now, Wilson said he’s fortunate to be able to volunteer.
“I probably could have asked to have been paid now,” he said, but decided “to donate some time and energy to the effort.” Whether he’d accept any future salary remains to be seen, although Wilson said “there is something about the organization recognizing the value of the role.”
When Romney was hired in 1999, he pledged to take an annual salary only if the 2002 Games ended up in the black, then donate all of it to various charities, a promise he reiterated when reporting a profit was made.
Wilson said he has yet to talk with Romney about the Games.
“I will. It’s something that’s on my list of things to do,” he said. “I have a number of questions that I would like to ask him. They center around, how do you build the right team to put this together. ... How did he think about positioning our state in its own distinct way?”
State playing a bigger part in Utah’s second Olympics
There’s no question the state has a bigger role in the 2034 Games. Not only did the governor and legislative leaders fill the organizing committee’s top spots, it was Cox who signed the host contract with the IOC rather than the Salt Lake City mayor.
That makes the state the guarantor of the Games, putting Utah taxpayers on the hook for any shortfalls. It was the same in 2002, when the IOC only allowed cities to make that deal and the state provided indemnification for Salt Lake City against any losses.
The increased involvement by state officials makes sense to Wilson.
“If I’m a state leader, what I want to make sure is that two things happen. One is that we make sure there’s no risk to taxpayers. But we also want to put on the best Games that have every happened,” he said.
While Wilson was still speaker, state lawmakers approved legislation authorizing the governor to sign the host contract, a move he said made sense “practically” for Cox even though it may not have technically been necessary.
The state Olympics “czar” appointed ahead of the 2002 Games by then-Gov. Mike Leavitt to review government involvement isn’t needed now and may never be, Wilson said, adding his goal is that “things are going so smoothly that the state doesn’t really see that as super important.”
So how much control does the state expect to have?
“They appointed the leadership of the board and they’ve said to us, ‘Live up to our high expectations around Games that run smoothy, that reflect Utah values. You guys know what that looks like. Make it happen,’” he said.
Upholding “Utah values” has become a focus because of concerns sparked by scenes from the Opening Ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, especially a sequence featuring drag queens that was seen by Cox and other critics as mocking the biblical Last Supper.
“The Paris Games were a huge success from a viewership standpoint. The public loved the Games,” Wilson said, and he wants to see the same from the next Olympics in the United States, the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
“It will be very different from us,” he said of the L.A. Games. “We want them to be different than ours. They’re summer, we’re winter. They’re California, we’re mountains. But our Games can absolutely live up to the same standard and the same excitement as theirs, just in our own way.”
The story the Utah’s next Winter Games will tell about the state remains to be seen, but Wilson pointed out values like hard work and healthy competition are shared by Utahns and the Olympic movement.
He shook his head when asked if state leaders would have any veto powers over how Utah is portrayed in 2034.
“I would just say we will be collaborative in our approach in planning all of this. We’d be foolish to not, at a high level, read people in on themes and our strategies,” Wilson said. “I think I’m uniquely qualified to understand how to do that.”
What’s coming up for Utah’s Olympic organizing committee
Wilson’s new job is keeping him busier than expected. A recent weekday was spent in Park City at an all-day planning meeting with a management team that as of March 1 includes only two paid employees.
Starting in April, organizers will be able to work out of donated office space in downtown Salt Lake City, he said, even though the staff isn’t expected to grow beyond six paid employees by the end of the year.
Organizers are relying solely on donations to pay the bills through 2028, but participants in the fundraising program set to be launched soon will have the option of not having their contributions disclosed, Wilson said.
All of the $4 billion price tag for organizing the Games is expected to come from private sources, primarily revenues from the sale of broadcast rights, sponsorships and tickets. The federal government will oversee security, as it does for the Super Bowl and other major events.
Utahns will have an opportunity to tell organizers their goals for a second Olympics during a “listening tour” that is still to be scheduled. Wilson said he’s already hearing from Utahns as far away as Bear Lake and St. George about getting involved.
Although a big selling point for Utah’s Games bid was that all of the needed venues are in place, there’s an interest in tying big projects to the Olympics like a proposed re-build of the Kimball Junction I-80 interchange.
Wilson said the Games can be a chance “to take a step back as a state and as an Olympic organizing committee and say how do we identify opportunities that would be mutually beneficial for the long-term growth of the state as well as make the Olympics” a better experience.
But managing the enthusiasm for an event that’s still far away is a challenge.
Because many Games-time details were dealt with during the bid, much of the focus between now and 2028 will be on yet to be detailed efforts to engage youth in Utah and around the country in Olympic winter sports.
“We want the public’s feedback. We want their involvement. We just have to temper expectations. We’re almost nine years out from Opening Ceremonies,” Wilson said. “There’s not a lot of work that we have to do in the next few years.”