Park City • Jackie Wiles’ Olympic dream was borne here in 2002.
The alpine skier from Oregon watched as Julia Mancuso and other Team USA skiers competed in the Salt Lake City games, and left determined to be on those slopes herself one day.
“I am here where I am today because I was able to witness that,” said Wiles, who is vying for a chance to compete in Pyeongchang in February. “… I was so inspired and I’ve had that dream from that moment since.”
The chance to inspire a future generation of American Olympians is just one reason why Wiles hopes to see the Winter Games back on U.S. soil in the near future. But while the U.S. Olympic Committee also want to bring the games back to the states, when and where remained unanswered questions as athletes and executives gathered in Utah on Monday for an unofficial kickoff to next year’s games in South Korea.
“I would say we are definitely interested in hosting the Winter Games in the United States at some point in time,” USOC chairman Larry Probst said at the start of a three-day media summit at Park City Mountain Resort.
Officials are scheduled to next meet Oct. 13, at which point officials said they could begin to discuss whether to mount a bid for the 2026 or 2030 Winter Olympics. The USOC has received interest from Salt Lake City, Denver and Reno/Tahoe as potential hosts, officials confirmed Monday, and CEO Scott Blackmun said he was hopeful there would be “room for more than one U.S. city to participate in the quiet, informational phase” leading up to the deadline for official launching a bid.
“As to who might have a leg up in that competition, we honestly haven’t evaluated or assessed it at all,” Blackmun said. “We’re grateful we have multiple cities who are interested in looking at that.”
Among the factors that could influence the USOC’s decision — particularly as it pertains to a possible 2026 bid — include the quality of the other bidding cities, and the impact a U.S. bid could have on the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
USOC officials said they believed Innsbruck, Austria, and Sion, Switzerland, were inclined to make official bids for the 2026 games. Calgary, Canada, could also make a bid for the games.
“We’ll monitor that, see what the situation looks like, and then develop our strategy,” Probst said.
The 2028 L.A. Olympics — formally announced earlier this month — could dampen interest in making a bid for 2026.
“It would be more difficult for us to bid for 2026,” Blackmun said, adding that they would wait unless L.A. officials “were comfortable it wasn’t going to impact their ability to market and promote the 2028 games”.
Patrick Sandusky, the USOC’s chief of external affairs, pumped the brakes on talks of upcoming bids Monday.
“We were biding for the Summer Games since 2003,” he said, “and it’s been, like, 15 days since we’ve won the Olympics. So, you know, there might be a little more time until we get to that point.”
But since first hosting in 2002, Salt Lake officials have maintained they are “ready, willing, and able” to host the games again.
And while the bribery scandal that unfolded during Salt Lake’s bid for the 2002 games may have left a sour taste in the mouths of some, U.S. Olympians have high praise for the state’s facilities.
“Park City is one of my favorite tracks in the world,” bobsledder Aja Evans said. “… It’s definitely still Olympic quality.”
Skier Mikaela Shiffrin was among the athletes Monday who expressed a strong desire to compete in a U.S. Olympics.
“There’s been talk about Salt Lake again and how that would work. I think there’s a lot of things that have to happen logistically to make it work,” she said. “But it’s a dream that we’re almost afraid to say, but we’re thinking about. It would be amazing.”
Snowboarder Kelly Clark, who won gold in the halfpipe in Utah in 2002, came away with a special appreciation for the experience.
“Having an Olympics on home soil really does something to the next generation that watches. It becomes possible,” she said. “I know we can watch it from afar, but when it’s your home country it kind of breaks down an invisible barrier and ignites a fire.”