IOC awards 2034 Winter Games to Utah and pushes state officials to help end FBI investigation

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during the final presentation to the IOC on Wednesday July 24, 2024. Photo: AP // David Goldman

By Graham Dunbar, Associated Press

PARIS — What was expected to be a simple coronation of Salt Lake City as the 2034 Winter Olympic host turned into complicated Olympic politics Wednesday, as the IOC pushed Utah officials to end an FBI investigation into a suspected doping coverup.

The International Olympic Committee formally awarded the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake in an 83-6 vote, but only after a contingent of Utah politicians and U.S. Olympic leaders signed an agreement that pressured them to lobby the federal government.

The International Olympic Committee is angry about an ongoing U.S. federal investigation of suspected doping by Chinese swimmers who were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Games despite positive drug tests. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accepted Chinese explanations for the tests, and U.S. officials are now investigating that decision under an anti-conspiracy law passed after the Russian doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Games.

President Thomas Bach wants to make sure WADA is the lead authority on doping cases in Olympic sports, especially with the Summer Olympics headed to Los Angeles in 2028. The IOC added a clause to Salt Lake’s host contract, effectively demanding that local organizers — including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox — push to shut down the investigation or risk losing the Olympics.

“That was the only way that we could guarantee that we would get the Games,” Cox said after the announcement. If the U.S. does not respect the “supreme authority of WADA, the governor said, ”they can withdraw the Games from us.”

Even in the world of Olympic diplomacy, it was a stunning power move to force government officials to publicly agree to do the IOC’s lobbying.

U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Chair Gene Sykes said some officials and athletes from other countries are worried that the anti-conspiracy law would allow the U.S. to arrest or subpoena Olympic visitors.

Some officials “have been very anxious about what it would mean to the sports figures who came to the United States, somehow they were subject to uncertainty in terms of their freedom of travel,” Sykes said. “And that is always concerning to people who don’t understand the United States.”

The capital city of Utah was the only candidate after the IOC gave Salt Lake City exclusive negotiating rights last year in a fast-tracked process.

The campaign team presenting the bid on stage to IOC members included Cox, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Alpine ski great Lindsey Vonn. Back home, a 3 a.m. public watch party gathered to see the broadcast from Paris.

The clause inserted into the contract requires Utah officials to work with current and future U.S. presidents and Congress “to alleviate your concerns” about the federal investigation into doping.

WADA’s role is under scrutiny for accepting a Chinese investigation that declared all 23 swimmers were contaminated by traces of a banned heart medication in a hotel kitchen. Evidence to prove the theory has not been published. The implicated swimmers won three gold medals in Tokyo, and some are also competing in Paris.

The case can be investigated in the U.S. under federal legislation named for a whistleblower of Russian state doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. The IOC and WADA lobbied against the law, known as the Rodchenkov Act, which gives U.S. federal agencies wide jurisdiction over doping enforcement worldwide.

“We will work with our members of Congress,” Gov. Cox told Bach and IOC voters ahead of the 2034 vote, “we will use all the levers of power open to us to resolve these concerns.”

The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, who has often publicly feuded with WADA, said in a statement it was “shocking to see the IOC itself stooping to threats in an apparent effort to silence those seeking answers to what are now known as facts.”

Salt Lake City first hosted the Winter Games in 2002. That bid was hit with a bribery scandal, which led to anti-corruption reforms at the IOC.

Future U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney was brought in to clean up the Games, which went off well despite tightened security. The Games were the biggest international sports event hosted by the U.S. following the Sept. 11 attacks five months earlier.

Utah Gov. Cox confirmed Romney is already involved in the lobbying demanded by the IOC.

It is an Olympic tradition for lawmakers and even heads of state to come to an IOC meeting and plead their case to be anointed as an host city.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair made key interventions at past IOC meetings to secure Olympics for their countries. U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Copenhagen in 2009 did not help in Chicago’s losing cause for the 2016 Summer Games that went to Rio de Janeiro.

For its second turn, Salt Lake City will get almost 10 full years to prepare — the longest lead-in for a modern Winter Games — amid longer-term concerns about climate change affecting snow sports and reducing the pool of potential hosts.

It will be the fifth Winter Games in the U.S. Before Salt Lake City in 2002, there was Lake Placid in 1980 and 1932, and Squaw Valley — now known as Olympic Valley — in 1960.

In a separate decision earlier in Paris, the 2030 Winter Games was awarded to France for a regional project split between ski resorts in the Alps and the French Riviera city of Nice.

That project needs official signoff from the national government being formed, and the Prime Minister yet to be confirmed, after recent elections called by President Emmanuel Macron. He helped present the 2030 bid Wednesday to IOC members.

Hours later, the member list included Sykes, the USOPC chair, who became a full IOC member with an 82-3 vote.