It feels like the city is fairly well down the road in terms of making commitments to participate in hosting the Olympics. The date is unknown, maybe 2030, maybe 2034, maybe not at all. Nobody knows. It looked like Utah was going to get 2030 by default, but the IOC has beaten the bushes for some other bidders. The graft is better when there are cities competing for it, rather than looking at the price tag and running away.
Friends have been grousing about the lack of public discussion on the decision. While I agree, the reality is that once the ski jump and bobsled track were built, if Utah ever hosts the Olympics again, we are ground zero. Those facilities aren’t going to be duplicated. The State seems determined to host, and will drag us along for the ride whether we like it or not. At this point, all we can do is figure out the date and decide what to wear to the party. Maybe we can use Olympic funding to solve some local problems, but the decision seems to be when, not if, the world arrives on our doorstep again.
I was skeptical of the 2002 Olympics. It seemed too big for what was then a very small town. It was ambitious in a way that I wasn’t sure we could pull off. Then the attack on the World Trade Center happened. We were committed at that point, but it seemed like a terrible idea to become that kind of target. The security drills leading up to the games, early that winter, were creepy and fed all my fears about it. I was planning on leaving town for the duration. But a good friend who was working on it convinced me I needed to stay and get involved. In the end, I had a volunteer job that was extremely rewarding, loved watching events that I cared nothing about, and walked Main Street absolutely spell-bound. I drove to Salt Lake several times to see Salt Lake City transformed. It was a great event, a party I’m glad I participated in.
Do I want to do it again? Not so much. The problem wasn’t the party, it was the hangover. It’s impossible to prove one way or the other that the development binge over the last 20 years was a result of the Olympics. It’s also impossible to deny that the primary, lasting impact of the Olympics was forever changing Utah’s public image.
Prior to the games, Utah’s tourism office did a national poll to see what Utah’s public image was. To its shock and disappointment, Utah’s public image was — a shrug. To the very limited extent the rest of the nation had ever given Utah a second thought, it was dismissed as weird. But that was a small minority. Most people had never heard of Utah or couldn’t find it on a map.
The LDS Church was an enthusiastic backer of the Olympics. It’s not that they are great winter sports fans (there’s no quicker route to hell than skiing on the Sabbath). They just thought the exposure would be a good missionary tool. Show the world that Utahns, and specifically Mormons, aren’t weird. They embraced it. The abstemious Church supported sweeping changes in the liquor laws to facilitate the bid. The motto of the games was, “The World is Welcome Here.” And in terms of hospitality, Utah did it up right. The stated goal was to normalize Utah in the public mind. The Olympics did more than that. Utah suddenly was cool. The rest of the country discovered that the whole state should be a national park. The secret was out.
The world was welcome here, but we assumed it would leave. We were growing fast enough internally without asking for more. There were some economic hiccups that spread out the timing, but the growth in the state following the Olympics soared. It hasn’t been all bad, but on balance, I liked things a lot better when Utah was weird. You could drive to Alta to ski. You could go to Moab on Friday night and find a camping spot. Stuff worked, though often in quirky ways. While you can’t prove it was all caused by the Olympics, it’s pretty certain that Goldman Sachs couldn’t have moved hundreds of employees to Salt Lake without the Olympic seal of approval.
So there’s the challenge. How to put on another really great party, but convince the guests to go home when it’s over. If our growth tsunami was caused, at least in part, by the Olympics proving that Utah is “normal,” the solution is to use the next Olympics to show the world that we are not.
I’m not sure how we go about the re-weirding of Utah. Since the Taliban has taken over in so many states, our politics seem rather tame. The LDS Church wanted to be seen as mainstream, so don’t look to them for help in re-weirding. They won’t be requiring Amish hats and pioneer bonnets. Without institutional support, it’s up to us to remember all those things we had to explain away to visiting friends. For starters, we could bring back the mini-bottle and private club license. Let’s make Utah weird again.