NEW YORK — Utah’s Olympic organizers were led briskly past the “Production in Process: Authorized Personnel Only” sign in Rockefeller Center Wednesday morning as the “Today” show marked 100 days until the start of the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy.
Their VIP tour, which included a stop by the anchor desk as Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin bantered on the air, ended outside on the plaza, where Team USA athletes participated in interviews and even a cooking segment to promote the next Winter Games.
“Prep starts early,” another familiar face, Carson Daly, quipped when told the group in the surprisingly small studio was from the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Utah.
It all felt a little familiar to Fraser Bullock, the organizing committee’s president and executive chair. He’d appeared on the “Today” show back in 2002, as the chief operating officer for Utah’s last Winter Games that February.
Back then, he gave longtime weatherman Al Roker a cowboy hat during a broadcast from Salt Lake City. When Roker made the rounds of the plaza crowd during a commercial break, Bullock tried to remind him of their meeting more than two decades ago.
“He said, ‘Oh, that’s great’ and he gave me a fist bump,” Bullock laughed.
Utah’s ‘Athletes Families Initiative’ touted
Utah’s 2034 Winter Games are still more than 3,000 days away, but Bullock and other organizing committee leaders traveled to New York City for this week’s U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s Team USA Media Summit.
While Wednesday morning’s tour was an opportunity for them to see what’s in store for the state in coming years as the 2034 Games get closer, organizers have also been quietly holding meetings in New York.
That includes with NBC, which earlier this year announced a deal with the International Olympic Committee estimated to be worth $3 billion to extend the company’s U.S. media rights to Utah’s next Winter Games, as well as the 2036 Summer Games that have yet to be awarded.
“NBC’s such a great partner. They’re so welcoming to us,” Bullock said. “One of the topics we discussed is the Athletes Families Initiative and how we can send powerful stories to the world about the key roles families play in the athletes’ journeys.”
The initiative to provide housing and other support for the families of athletes, sparked by Olympic champion ski racer and organizing committee executive board member Lindsey Vonn’s own experiences, “is very exciting for all of us,” Bullock said.
Organizers also made an appearance at a Visit Salt Lake event for travel and lifestyle media held Tuesday night at a hotel in the Meatpacking District. The pitch promoting Salt Lake as a tourist destination featured Team USA athletes.
“People were blown away,” Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson said about the event that utilized immersive technology. “It was an incredible opportunity to let everyone in our nation know they’re welcome in Utah.”
Wilson, one of the local elected officials advising organizers on host communities issues, said the Olympic and Paralympic athletes were “of course” the highlight of the Visit Salt Lake presentation.
The ‘unifying force’ of Team USA
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic officials have acknowledged that American athletes may not always be so welcome. In February, Team USA hockey athletes heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” booed in Canada at the start of the 4 Nations Face-Off.
“We have gotten questions from athletes who are wondering how they’re going to be received and if there’s anything (they) need to be doing differently, or thinking about differently,” the CEO of the USOPC, Sarah Hirshland, told reporters Tuesday.
“The reality is, I don’t think we’ve had anyone suggest that they don’t feel safe,” Hirshland said. “But they certainly are conscious of how they might be perceived. And we’re conscious of trying to help them feel really comfortable.”
That means understanding what they represent, she suggested.
“The one thing that they can be incredibly proud of is being part of the team of incredible elite athletes across a wide range of sports that are there actually as a unifying force for this country,” Hirshland said.
It’s a role “that really resonates with the community of athletes. It resonates frankly with the general public and everything we’re doing. So our focus is on recognizing the good power of sport and celebrating that, and using that as the anchor to feel really proud of what we’re doing.”
Team USA athletes said Wednesday they try to tune out distractions.
“You have to unplug from all this outside politics, things that are happening,” said Oksana Masters, the country’s most decorated winter Paralympian. Born in Ukraine, she said she got her start in Nordic skiing at the Solider Hollow Nordic Center built for the 2002 Winter Games.
Responding to questions after a panel about athletes’ perspectives on health, Masters said her focus is on her health and her body when competing, “not giving a microphone and a speaker to the outside forces that may add more pressure.”
Salt Lake City speedskater Erin Jackson, who at 2022 Winter Games in Beijing became the first Black woman to win gold in an individual event at a winter Olympics, also said unplugging from social media “can really help.”