As the mother of a Team USA women’s hockey player competing in the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games, Becky Lindsey couldn’t hold back the tears when Utah Gov. Spencer Cox talked in Milan on Sunday about the importance of the families behind the athletes.
It just ”all of sudden hit me more than anything has,” said Lindsey, whose daughter Hayley Scamurra was on the U.S. team that won silver at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing and is a professional ice hockey player for the Montreal Victoire in Canada.
What struck the Annapolis, Maryland, mom was the governor’s recognition of the sacrifices made by the family members behind the athletes at an Olympics. “It’s love for your child,” she said, her voice continuing to quaver with emotion.
After his remarks, Cox spoke with Lindsey, reminding her, “this is for you guys, too.”
She was one of many parents mingling at a midday reception at the Starbucks Winter House, a destination for Team USA athletes competing in Milan and their families that’s located in a hotel in a lively city neighborhood.
Utah’s ‘tribute to the families’ of athletes
“In Utah, we’re the family state,” the governor said. “We wanted to pay tribute to the families. They often get forgotten in this process and we didn’t want to forget them here, and we certainly don’t want to forget them in ‘34.”
When Utah hosts the 2034 Winter Games, athletes’ families will be front and center, thanks to an initiative to assist them with housing, transportation and other needs that came from Olympic champion alpine skier Lindsey Vonn, a key figure in the Games’ bid and organization.
“The athletes family initiative will be the first of its kind. We suspect it will be replicated by other countries when we’re done because it will be so popular,” Cox said. “Every Olympics, you want to add something that carries on and makes the Games better. This is our opportunity.”
He said athletes will welcome the help for their loved ones.
“The complaints we hear from athletes all the time is, ‘I’m in the Games. I’m so excited. What do I do with my family.’ Hotels have been booked out sometimes for years in advance and it’s incredibly expensive,” the governor said.
Olympians at “their highest moment in life, they want their family there to celebrate. Sometimes their families can’t even make it. We don’t want that to be the case in Utah,” he said. “We want them to have that moment together.”
Utah businesswoman and philanthropist Gail Miller, who ran in the Milan-Cortina Olympic torch relay Thursday, told the Winter House guests that they can look forward to the initiative’s debut in 2034.
Miller’s family foundation pledged $20 million to the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to jump start the Podium34 fundraising effort that already has some $250 million committed.
“I’m not a politician. I’m not a diplomat. But I am a mom, and I know something about families. And I know how important it is to have support for families, who support their athletes,” Miller said.
The former owner of the Utah Jazz whose Larry H. Miller Company now owns Utah’s soccer and baseball teams said she knows “how important it is to communities to have athletics in their communities. It brings us together. It gives us something to unite us.”
Logistical difficulties faced by athletes’ families
Park City’s Mike Dawson, the father of speedskater Casey Dawson, an Olympic medalist in 2022, attended the reception but was concerned about getting across the city to see his son compete in his second Winter Games in a few hours.
“We have been trying to figure out the logistics. Are we going to take the train, and which train when? Then when you get to the arena, we didn’t realize you’ve got to walk 20 minutes to get from the train station to the entrance,” he said.
Having someone help with those details will make a difference, Mike Dawson said, calling the governor’s presence at the reception “a really good signal” that the state’s Olympic organizers will step up when it comes to helping athletes’ families.
Mike Dawson said when his son won a bronze medal at the 2022 Games in Beijing, China’s policy of no foreign spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic meant he had to witness the win from a Park City Olympics watch party.
“Selfishly speaking, for the parents it’s nice to know you’re considered part of the process of your child making it to the Olympics,” Mike Dawson said, adding that “by including the families, it allows them to help the athlete focus on sport and athletics.”
America’s most-decorated winter Olympian, Apolo Anton Ohno, won his first gold medal at Utah’s first Winter Games, in 2002. He told the Deseret News that the parents of athletes “dedicate so much of their lives Toward their kids and they’re behind the curtain.”
U.S. athletes aren’t sponsored by the government so it’s up to families to provide support, Ohno said. An adviser to the Utah organizing committee, he said with the athletes family initiative, the Winter Games “will be amazing in 2034.”
Four-time Olympic speedskater Catherine Raney Norman, the organizing committee’s vice president for development and athlete relations, said she’s grateful organizers will be able to provide the assistance.
“When I was an athlete, I remember my families struggling to find housing and where they should be and all that sort of stuff,” she said. “And for us to be able to bring these families together, to help celebrate them, to cheer on their athletes, and to find that sort of sense of community — and do it how we like to do it in Utah — makes me really grateful.”
Short track speedskater Julie Letai — who has trained and lived in Utah since 2019, was joined in Milan by her parents, with her siblings, cousins and friends coming later in the Games. “It’s incredible,” she said. “I feel very supported.”
It is special for those who support her to be able to gather at a place like the Winter House, she said.
“I think it’s special for them, which makes me happy that they get to enjoy it, because they deserve a lot of credit for this too,” Letai said. “Obviously, my family has been through a lot and done a lot for me to be here. So I’m glad they kind of have a place to gather, and hopefully they feel celebrated here too.”
Contributing: Sarah Jane Weaver
