Legacies of North American Winter Games - Salt Lake

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  The official poster of the 2002 Games in Salt Lake.

  The Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games took place from Feb. 8 to Feb. 24, 2002. 2,531 athletes from 77 countries competed in seven sports, 15 disciplines and 78 events. A total of 165 sport sessions were held at 10 competition venues – at the time, the Salt Lake Games featured the largest sport program in the history of the Olympic Winter Games.
• The Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games were held less than six months after the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11th, at a time when the American economy was in a recession and travelers were jittery about air travel. Nevertheless, the Games turned a profit of $100 million.
• The Games produced 35,000 job years of employment, an income of $1.5 billion, infrastructure investment of $435 million, visitor spending of $123 million, and a net revenue to state and local government of $76 million.
• Olympic Games-related construction and employment cushioned the state of Utah against the dramatic economic falls being experienced elsewhere in the United States in the months up to and following 9/11.
• “For most Americans, these were the Winter Games that worked,” wrote Bill Pennington of The New York Times on Feb. 24, 2002. “Ultimately, the Salt Lake games conferred upon the Olympic movement a modern blueprint for how to run a Winter Games that are cozy, attractive to a younger audience and with significance and sizzle.”
• An estimated total of 220,000 visitors came to Utah for the Games, consisting of 90,000 domestic and 15,000 international visitors, 64,000 sponsors and guests, 15,000 Olympic organizations, 15,000 members of news groups and media, 15,000 security personnel and 6,000 VIPs.
• The Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games Torch Relay began in November, 2001 in Athens, Greece. 12,012 torchbearers carried the torch for 13,500 miles. They ranged in age from 12 to 103, including parents and police officers, soldiers and schoolteachers, heart surgeons and even Hiroshima survivors, who, according to SLOC’s Final Report, “spoke to children about the value of forgiveness.”
• The United States more than doubled its previous medal count in 2002, coming second overall with a total of 34. Some credit a “home team advantage.”
• 69 of the 211 athletes on the U.S. team in Turin in 2006 had been training at the Olympic Games facilities in Salt Lake. Once again, in 2006, the U.S. came second to Germany in the overall medal count.
• Torch Relay business receptions in 10 targeted cities resulted in 3,600 business contacts.
• SLOC, the United States Olympic Committee and the IOC established a $70 million-plus endowment for the Utah Athletic Foundation to maintain the 2002 Olympic Games facilities in perpetuity, including all replacement costs, without burdening taxpayers.
• The Utah Athletic Foundation is now the largest private non-profit funder of sport in the United States, despite no financial support from any government.
• In 2006, the U.S. Speedskating (USS) team moved its headquarters from Cleveland, Ohio to Salt Lake City, in order to use the training facilities at the Olympic Oval. The mandate of the USS is to take skaters “from pond to podium,” training athletes from the grassroots up to the elite level.
• With 75 U.S. medals, speed skating is responsible for more American success in the Games than any other sport.
• Both Calgary and Salt Lake claim their Olympic Ovals feature “the fastest ice in the world.” Salt Lake’s was the site of 10 Olympic Games records and eight world records.
• A total of 416 athletes from 36 nations took part in the 2002 Paralympic Winter Games, with the countries of Andorra, Chile, the People’s Republic of China, Croatia, Greece and Hungary participating for the first time.
• The Paralympic sport program was composed of three sports and four disciplines: Alpine Skiing, Ice Sledge hockey and Nordic Skiing (Cross-Country and Biathlon).
• Fully 85% of tickets were sold to Paralympic events in Utah -- an unusually high number of spectators.
• More than 100,000 trees were planted in Utah, and 15 million worldwide, in keeping with SLOC’s commitment to environmental conservation. During the Games, SLOC recycled or composted 95.6% of the Games’ waste.
• According to SLOC’s Final Report, with the help of its partners, the 2002 Games “permanently removed more than 243,840 metric tons of pollutants from Utah, the United States and Canada through a program that offset the energy and emissions associated with staging the Games through emission-reduction credits through an environmental commodities broker…. Salt Lake 2002 has been certified as climate neutral by the Climate Neutral Network.”
• Despite a budget of more than $200 million, SLOC got federal funds to boost public safety resources. By 2002, the SLOC security program had cost $350 million and was the largest in Olympic Games history.
• The volunteer dropout rate for the Salt Lake Games was just 2.5 per cent, lower than its paid work force and much lower than the usual 11 per cent to 15 per cent of Olympic Games.
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  An iconic moment of the Salt Lake Games: Canadian figure skaters Jamie Salé and David Pelletier won Olympic Gold after a judging controversy.

  Worldwide television coverage of the Salt Lake Games was 50% greater than Nagano and 170% greater than Lillehammer.
• TV audiences for the Opening Ceremony broke all previous ratings for any Olympic Games Ceremony, winter or summer. NBC’s guaranteed audiences for advertisers were exceeded by 20 per cent.
• The Salt Lake Men’s gold medal ice hockey game, between the U.S. and Canada, achieved the highest ever TV audience in Canada. An estimated 38 million people watched it worldwide, the largest audience to watch an ice hockey game since the 1980 gold medal competition at the Lake Placid Olympic Winter Games.
• As a result of broadcasting the Olympic Winter Games, NBC out-performed its competitors; its rating averaged 149 per cent above regular network programming, and the Olympic Games “halo” boosted ratings for other NBC programs, such as the Today Show, Nightly News and NBC Sports.
• Eurosport reported a total audience of 132 million viewers -- more than was reported for the 1998 World Cup.
• German viewership tripled that of the Nagano Olympic Winter Games, with regular audiences of more than 10 million people a night.
• More than 100 million viewers from Japan watched 17 hours each of the Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games, even though the time zone was unfavourable.
• The estimated value of print media exposure during the Salt Lake Games (tourism themes only) was $22.9 million, from national and syndicated stories, Sports Illustrated “Dailies,” USA Today, U.S. daily newspapers from major markets and Southern Utah stories. A 2001 pre-Games public relations campaign included 109.9 million impressions.
• The Salt Lake Games attracted the attention of Internet users -- it was among the top 50 most common searches on Lycos for nine weeks. The same document noted that there had been a 500 per cent increase in Internet searches for Roots, the clothing company responsible for outfitting the U.S. and Canadian Olympic teams and makers of the wildly popular beret.
• NBC, whose estimated profit from its Olympic Winter Games broadcast was $75 million, sold $740 million in ads during the Games, including $20 million sold after the Opening Ceremonies.
• SLOC was the first Organizing Committee to make tickets available primarily on the Internet, according to the Final Report. Over the course of its ticket-request phase, 94 per cent of requests were submitted over the Internet.
• SLOC’s Education function provided Games-related experiences for more than 600,000 Utah students, from Kindergarten through Grade 12.
• The Salt Lake Olympic Arts Festival featured 60 signature performances and 15 major exhibitions from internationally acclaimed artists, dancers and performers. It attracted about 400,000 people.
• As of August, 2005, Outside magazine was talking about Salt Lake City as “one of [its] 18 towns that have it all.” In an article called Where to Live Now, Outside described the city as “gradually wriggling itself into the environmental forefront…. Light rail lines, christened just in time for the 2002 Winter Olympics, reduce auto traffic by funneling 44,000 riders a day in and out of downtown, while the SLC sewage treatment plant turns released methane in to electricity to help run itself.”

• Dates: Feb. 8 to 24, 2002
• 77 NOCs (Nations)
• 2,399 athletes (886 women, 1,513 men)
• 78 events
• 22,000 volunteers

• News Release:  Civic pride, unity, a key legacy for Salt Lake 2002 Winter Games
• Download: Legacies of North American Winter Games - Volume 3: Salt Lake 2002