During a tour of the University of Utah facilities that will likely form part of the Athletes Village for the 2034 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, one stop in particular quickened the pulse of Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee.
It wasn’t the gym, where he commented on the number of students lining up for their turn on the climbing wall. It wasn’t the dorm rooms, which he noted were considerably more spacious than his days as an Olympic fencer, where he said he bunked in a 10-person room with one shower. It wasn’t even the field at Rice Eccles Stadium, which was already spiffed up in preparation for the Utes’ homecoming football game Saturday night against Arizona that Bach was scheduled to attend.
No, what caught Bach’s eye was the seven-tiered hot sauce display at the cafeteria inside the Kahlert Village residence hall.
In a nod to the thrill-seeking days of his youth — which he detailed later in a discussion with Utes Olympic hopefuls — he noted that he’d seen a display of roughly 50 hot sauces while visiting the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee headquarters in Colorado earlier in the week. He said he’d tried the hottest one — one called Da Bomb that will be familiar to fans of the YouTube talk show “Hot Ones.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach tours the Olympic Village with with Rachel Aho, Senior director of housing, and Fraser Bullock, at the University of Utah, on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.
Bach’s condiment choices may give him indigestion. The IOC’s choice of a host for the 2034 games has not.
“All the ingredients are there,” he said, “for an Olympic Village that will make an athlete think twice before he is leaving.”
Salt Lake City today, he said, hardly resembles the considerably smaller town that hosted the Games 22 years ago.
“I don’t recognize anything anymore,” he said. “And that’s for the better.”
The IOC general assembly voted this summer ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics to name Utah the host of the 2034 Winter Games. That prompted a visit by Bach, who had not visited Salt Lake City since the 2002 Winter Games. In addition to a tour of the U., he made stops at the Grand America Hotel, the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns and Utah Olympic Park in Park City.
Most of the sites the president toured have undergone renovations in recent years or are planning expansions. The UOP added a competition-grade alpine training hill in 2022. The Olympic Oval plans to renovate its locker rooms while serving as the temporary training site for the new Utah Hockey Club NHL team. And the U. has already begun an expansion project that is being undertaken with an eye toward creating the Athlete Village.
When the university hosted the Olympic Athlete Village in 2002, it welcomed roughly 3,500 athletes and coaches from 74 nations. This time around, organizers expect to need closer to 5,500 beds for the athletes. Plus, Utah has proposed setting up a first-of-its-kind family village. That endeavor will, according to the bid committee’s website, “make affordable housing available just outside the Village and provide translators for a tailored Games experience for loved ones.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lori McDonald, University of Utah vice president of student affairs, visits with Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, during a tour of the Olympic Village at the U., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.
Organizers have not yet determined how many beds they will make available to athletes and their families nor exactly where those accommodations will be located. The school has struggled in recent years to keep up with the demand for housing from its own students.
One strong candidate is Kahlert Village, a graceful timber-and-glass building funded by four female philanthropists from Utah. It opened to students in the fall of 2020 and has beds for about 1,600 students. The university also just broke ground on another 1,300-bed residence just to the south of Kahlert Village that is expected to be complete in 2026, according to Sean Grube, the associate vice president of housing and residential education. Renderings of those buildings were on display as Bach exited Kahlert Village.
“I think they’ll do,” one of Bach’s aides said during the unveiling.
More dorms built in two more phases, Grube said, will result in 5,000 total beds being added to the campus in time for the 2034 Games. The cluster of new residences will be located just north of the Huntsman Center.
Similarly, the university constructed its Heritage Commons dorms on the north side of Mario Capecchi Drive for the 2002 Games. Students were allowed to move into those dorms during the first semester of the 2001-02 school year, but those who did were displaced during the second semester when the buildings were placed under the Olympic security perimeter.
Lori McDonald, the vice president of student affairs, said students in those dorms were offered housing in older, barrack-style dorms during the spring of 2002. (Those dorms were later demolished, she said, to make way for the George S. Eccles Student Life Center that Bach toured Friday).
To minimize disruption to studies, McDonald said, the school adjusted its calendar to fit the Olympics. Students came back from winter break a week earlier than usual and had a three-week spring break while the Games were in town. The school year was also extended a week later than usual.
School leaders have not decided what the schedule will look like in 2033-34, McDonald said, and do not have a timeline for doing so — the students who would be most affected are, after all, probably only in fourth or fifth grade right now. However, she acknowledged that both the Winter Olympics and Paralympics have grown to include more events and more athletes. As a result, she surmised that virtual classes and other tools picked up in the years since the pandemic may play a larger role next time around.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Speed skater Ethan Cepuran listens as Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach says a few words, during a tour of Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah, on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.
“We’ve certainly expanded the tools that we know are available,” she said. “And again, who knows what will be available [by then]? So I’m certain that we will look at all different tools.”
During a media scrum Saturday at the Utah Olympic Park, Bach said one of the biggest challenges for Salt Lake City in the decade until its Games will be harnessing emerging technologies.
“The opportunity is to turn this momentum into creativity, to think new and to think big, to look into the future, to see which opportunities digitalization is offering for the presentation of the games,” he said. “What will [artificial intelligence] mean in 10 years from now for organizing the games, for spectators, experiences, athletes, training and so on. The [opportunity] to be creative and to be proactive to develop this future is now great.”
Bach will leave it to another IOC president to shepherd Salt Lake City into that new era. After 12 years at the helm, the 70-year-old will not seek reelection when his term ends next summer.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach (center) poses Heather Kahlert and Katherine Garff during a tour of the Olympic Village at the University of Utah, on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.
Salt Lake City — which plans to host the 2034 Games without building any additional, permanent venues — is well-equipped to put on another successful Olympics, Bach said. If it wasn’t, he noted, Utah wouldn’t have been selected over the IOC’s own host nation, Switzerland, as the host of the 2034 Games this summer.
That said, a few areas no doubt need some attention. When probed, Bach didn’t offer any specific suggestions. Still, it’s a good bet he wouldn’t mind if Utah’s eateries looked into expanding their selection of hot sauces.
