Salt Lake Celebrates Selection
The Winter Olympics finally came to this capital city at the base of the Wasatch Mountains Friday, with 50,000 people celebrating and the prospects of something very big hovering just over the snowcapped peaks.
That’s big, as in big money from television networks salivating over a ratings-buster Winter Games on American soil.
And big, as in big worries among local folks wondering just how much their highways and tax bills can hold.
An hour after the International Olympic Committee voted overwhelmingly to hold the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, local officials were selling victory T-shirts fresh from the printers.
“They were still warm,” said Tad Martin, who had given the go-ahead to the printer moments after the IOC announcement almost 6,000 miles away in Budapest, Hungary.
A three-day festival billed as the “Party of the Century” drew celebrants to the Salt Lake City-County Building to watch the announcement on giant TV screens. They bounced to salsa and rock music, painted their faces and hair and jubilantly lifted their children high in the sky.
President Clinton sent his congratulations from the Halifax economic summit.
“This will be an historic event for Salt Lake City,” Clinton said. “It’s a great thing for the Western part of the United States and indeed for our whole country.”
In addition to a celebration, the party marked a turning point in the life of Salt lake’s Olympic quest, which began more than 29 years and four rejections ago.
The T-shirts, caps and other firstday souvenirs were the initial wave of commercial sales that will bankroll the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee for the next few years.
The committee also is negotiating for a line of credit with a local bank and has signed a marketing agreement with the United States Olympic Committee, which is expected to be detailed in the next few days.
The Salt Lake budget for the 2002 Games is $798 million. More than 80 percent would come from broadcasters, sponsors and licensees.
The bidding war between the four major television networks promises to be intense.