Why a top IOC executive is coming to Utah

Yahoo

05-02-2025

Next week, a top International Olympic Committee executive will be in Utah to kick off planning for the 2034 Winter Games.
The organizers of Utah's next Olympics are in 'a very unusual situation,' IOC Olympic Games Executive Director Christophe Dubi told the Deseret News Tuesday in a virtual interview from the organization's Swiss headquarters.
'We have a 10 years' life span. We have very little to do on the fundamentals for the Games, that is, the venues,' since the facilities from the 2002 Winter Games are set to be used again. 'We have what you know is a perfect situation.'
'What are the first programs we're going to tackle and deliver, so that we start involving the communities and kids in particular?'
— IOC Olympic Games Executive Director Christophe Dubi
So what's there to talk about during his two-day visit that follows a stop in Los Angeles, the host of the 2028 Summer Games?
Plenty, it turns out.
Utah has yet to announce an organizing committee for the Olympic Games, even though the host contract signed by Gov. Spencer Cox after last year's July 24 IOC vote set a Christmas Eve deadline for putting what's known as an OCOG in place.
That's coming 'pretty soon,' Dubi said. 'We're having now regular conversations in every shape and form.'
But he also wants to know how Utah will use the time it's been given under the new, less formal bid process to organize another Winter Games. Previously, organizers had just seven years to get ready for one of the world's largest sporting events.
There needs to be a decision 'on the priorities in what is the land of opportunity,' Dubi said. 'What are the first programs we're going to tackle and deliver, so that we start involving the communities and kids in particular?'
Detailed planning, he said, can wait.
'It's urgent to wait with respect to Games organization,' Dubi said, the same advice he offered nearly a year ago during an inspection tour of Utah's Olympic venues, citing the advances to come in artificial intelligence and other technology.
He said preparation also need to get underway to ensure Utah's Olympic organizers get the most out of the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy, just a year away. That includes figuring out who needs to go, Dubi said.
'It sounds a long time, a year, except that we are operating over a very large territory. The plans have to be extremely well designed' for the Utah observers in Italy, he said. 'It has to be planned now.'
Unlike Utah's compact Olympics, where every venue is within an hour of the athlete housing at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, the Milan-Cortina Games are spread across a wide swath of Italy.
That means the lessons there for Utah organizers won't be about logistics like transporting athletes from Point A to Point B, Dubi said.
'The geographical distribution is so different that this is absolutely not what they're going to be looking at,' he said. Instead, Dubi suggested Utahns focus instead on what Italians are bringing to the Olympics.
'It's the way the Italians will deliver in each and every venue,' he said, bringing the spirit of the Games to the streets just as Paris' 2024 Summer Games did. 'It's the experience you can deliver if your are generous enough to have not only the venues hosting the best sport.'
Closing streets, providing gathering places for the public and 'offering the best possible hospitality outside of the best possible field of play. This is where Italians will be really, really good,' Dubi said. 'You have to be part of the best of what winter sports can offer.'
In Utah, he said, 'it will have a different flavor, different color, different music, different everything. But what you're looking for as a participant is that warmth, and that feeling of being part of something very special.'
Whether felt as an athlete, a volunteer or a spectator, that's 'a once in a lifetime experience.'
Fraser Bullock, president and CEO of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games that was behind the bid, said he's looking forward to the visit by Dubi and his team, calling the IOC executive 'a great friend going back to our partnership together in 2002.'
Bullock said they'll 'begin the early phase of outlining our integrated planning process. They have deep knowledge in many areas that will help us ensure we put on the best Games possible.'
He stopped short of saying the organizing committee will be announced during Dubi's visit, set for Feb. 13 and 14. Bullock, who's 69, is expected to be named the leader of the OCOG while setting up a successor.
A new bill introduced this session at the Utah Legislature would require the governor and legislative leaders to sign off on the head of the organizing committee. Utah taxpayers are the guarantor of the privately funded Games expected to cost a total of $4 billion.
'I really like the way that is being approached,' Dubi said, since 'an organizing committee is always a public-private partnership' that needs the 'consent of those backing and those that will support the Games.'
The IOC would also expect to be 'consulted, and comfortable with the choice,' he said, describing Bullock as 'someone I always very much admire and consider as a friend. He's a very special individual, for sure.'
Dubi said Utah's organizing committee will likely be similar to the one that oversaw the 2002 Winter Games. Unlike in the rest of the world, the organization responsible for staging a Games in the United States is entirely privately financed.
The 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps, for example, already has funding committed from regional and national authorities, but the 'economic capacity' of the United States is much larger compared to the European market, he said.
'It's incredible, the support you have' for sport, Dubi said, including from wealthy donors. 'It's only in the U.S.' He said there's 'dynamism' that comes from a private organization that has the backing of public authorities.
That includes U.S. President Donald Trump. Just days before being sworn in, Trump pledged his support for the Los Angeles Games during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida with Casey Wasserman, LA28's president and chairman.
'These are America's Olympics,' Trump told Wasserman, according to a report in Axios based on an unnamed source. 'These are more important than ever to L.A. and I'm going to be supportive in every way possible and make them the greatest Games.'
Dubi said that 'shows the commitment of Washington to what for sure will be extraordinary Games' in a city that has seen more than 10,000 homes destroyed and at least 29 lives lost in the recent wildfires.
'Our hearts and minds go to all those that have been affected. But at the same time, with this very American spirit, which is in such adversity, fight back and demonstrate that we can come back stronger,' Dubi said. 'This is something cultural deep-rooted in the U.S.'
The Olympics being held twice in the United States within a six-year span reflects the IOC's level of trust and the quality of the relationship, he said. To him, the United States means opportunities.
'What do we invent in Los Angeles in what is the most buzzing of the entertainment and sports market,' Dubi asked, before returning to the site of the 'extraordinary' 2002 Winter Games, in 2034.
'What do we invent for these Games,' he said, calling Utah a place 'where the conditions are perfect.'