Utah’s Olympic bid committee is determined to “stay humble,” as leader Fraser Bullock put it, while the announcement looms with near certainty next month that Salt Lake City will host the 2034 Winter Games.

This means taking nothing for granted — not letting press clippings go their heads, either — while following through strong with the remaining reports and presentations to the various Olympic bodies leading up to the International Olympic Committee’s official decision July 24 in Paris on the eve of the Summer Games.

They also are planning a street party for maybe thousands in downtown Salt Lake City at 3 a.m. our time when Salt Lake City-Utah will surely win the bid, given it’s the only candidate at this point and all reports to date have been, well, glowing. Huge screens will carry the moment live, and steady 80% support in polling of the state’s residents for the Olympics bears the promise that at least some will get up early or not go to bed at all in anticipation of the historic moment.

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And those aren’t the only celebrations on tap. Park City, of course. More in Salt Lake City at a decent hour. Provo. A big one in August at Utah Olympic Park. They anticipate others.

“We hope to have this great scene of 1,000 or more fans gathered around at 3 in the morning around the screens, watching the presentation from Washington Square,” said Tom Kelly, a member of the bid committee.

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And then! And then, 10 years of preparation, 10 years of keeping the support going, 10 years for elementary kids and preteens today to grow into Olympians who will compete for their country in Park City, Snowbasin and Utah’s capital.

Bullock and Catherine Raney-Norman, chair of the bid committee, briefed members of the strategic bid committee in a conference room above the museum at the Olympic Park while out the wall of window behind them some of those youngsters with destiny in mind twisted and spun on skis and splashed down in the pool designed for their acrobatics.

So a group of about 30 had a choice — the kids flying and splashing below, or the slides on a screen highlighting budgets and outlining plans for the future.

Bullock insisted the expenses would run less than the revenue during the long march to the opening, and murmurings among the audience found general agreement that the decade would rush by in terms of the preparations to come. Just as the past decade and especially the last five years to this point have passed quickly.

The bid committee still has a couple of big presentations to make, one technical, detailed and closed to the public; and the other to the IOC more designed to tap into the wonder of the moment, hopefully just before Salt Lake City-Utah at last is named the host for 2034.

“We’ve been working on rehearsals. It’s fun work, but it’s a lot of work,” Bullock said with a wry smile. He said he’d seen the scripts for the final presentation July 24, and had gone through them early Friday. “I got choked up a little bit.”  

The contingent from Utah, some from Park City, will nudge a hundred in Paris to witness the selection up close, including young athletes with talent to go with their aspirations and former Olympians, too. The excitement in the conference room rose even as Bullock and Raney-Norman went through comparatively dry details, at least compared to the kids sliding down the rampways and soaring into their tricks outside, and the crowd that turned out for Olympic Day on Friday.

“I’m really proud and hopeful that … when we are awarded, we’re starting off on day one thinking about getting kids in sport, and so more on that in the coming weeks,” Raney-Norman said.

Another typically glowing report on Utah’s fitness as Olympics host dropped Friday morning in the form of a 95-page report from the Future Host Commission. Bullock had to fight back a big smile when asked about the sense of certainty about the outcome of all this on July 24 while replying to a reporter that the committee would leave nothing to chance in the final presentations.

Like the athletes, he was just trying to stay in the moment and land that last part of the competition, never mind the perfect and near perfect scores to date.

The latest report: Report by the Future Host Commission for the Olympic Games
Salt Lake City-Utah 2034