Only hours after the Olympic flame went dark, downtown Salt Lake City streets were still, empty, the joyous frenzy of the previous 17 days gone just like that.
Gone but hardly forgotten.
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During the past decade, memories of that invigorating time have evolved into a deep-seated sense of pride, a communal ego boost derived from knowing that we, as a people, accomplished something that will resonate through the ages. Utahns rose to the occasion after much turbulence to give the world a reason to celebrate when it needed it most, just five months after Sept. 11, reverently referenced in the Opening Ceremony by the presence of the tattered World Trade Center flag.
"The Olympics left behind any lingering inferiority complexes," said Fraser Bullock, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee’s No. 2 man to Mitt Romney in putting on the 2002 Winter Games.
"When [outsiders] think, ‘Could Salt Lake or Utah host XYZ convention or do this massive project?’ We can just point to our fantastic Olympic experience. It shows we can do anything presented to us," he said, citing a parallel benefit. "The citizens of Utah also recognized that capability, which we’ve had all along. There’s a bit of Olympic legacy inside each and every one of us."
Numbers verify it. At the four Olympics since Salt Lake City’s shot at the big time, Utahns have been America’s most avid viewers of Games’ coverage on NBC — day in, day out, summer and winter.
That’s not to say life changed overnight in February 2002. Poverty was not eradicated. Murders still occur. Legitimate looks at Salt Lake City’s Olympic experience have concluded it did not alter the social order all that much.
"For all of the buildup, the length of time the city was involved in the process, the amount of resources — public and private — that were invested, the aftermath of holding the Olympics is surprisingly small," said Matthew Burbank, a University of Utah political scientist whose research includes studies of the Olympics and public policy. "Economically, it doesn’t change the state’s GDP [gross domestic product] in any way."
Before the Games, he said, outsiders thought of Utah primarily as the home of the Mormons. They still do.
In terms of promoting skiing, the driving force behind the state’s first Olympic push in the 1960s, Utah’s numbers are up 42 percent since 2002. Again, Burbank noted, Utah resorts lagged behind Colorado in number of skier days before the Games. They still do.
"The Games increased awareness of the area, but didn’t change the business climate much," said Pete Taylor, a management recruiter in Salt Lake City. "There are still many perceptions of the area that have an effect, such as the funny liquor laws and ‘If I am not a Mormon, will I fit in?’ "
But even if stereotypes are hard to dispel and a $100 million profit is not enough to make much of a dent in the economy, the state clearly emerged from the Games with a better infrastructure than it had going into the process.
Hosting the Olympics accelerated deliveries of federal funds for building the first two TRAX lines, reconstructing Interstate 15 through Salt Lake County and upgrading numerous freeway interchanges serving competition venues. Advanced telecommunication systems were installed along the Wasatch Front and Back.
With Olympic money, the University of Utah added new student housing and increased seating capacity at Rice-Eccles Stadium, site of the Opening and Closing ceremonies. Without that expansion, would the Pac-10 have come knocking at the Utes’ door so readily?
And what about the facilities — the speed skating oval in Kearns and the Utah Olympic Park complex of ski jumps, bobsled/luge track and freestyle aerials pool outside of Park City — that Utahns voted in 1989 to construct with $59 million in tax money, lacking any assurance Salt Lake City would get the Games?
This past year, their use by elite athletes and common fun-seekers has never been higher, testimony to the community’s ongoing involvement in making Utah the country’s winter sports capital. More evidence: Because of these facilities, 40 percent of U.S. team members at the 2010 Winter Games lived here full or part time.
Observed Spencer Eccles Jr., executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and a second-generation Olympic booster: "I spoke to athletes at the last Olympics in Vancouver and they said, ‘We watched the Olympics as kids in Salt Lake and trained on those venues and now we’re Olympians. We set goals to be Olympians because of the [2002] Olympics.’ "
Ice sheets were a rarity in Utah before the Games, but now they are plentiful — from Provo to West Valley City and up to Logan — offering recreational and training possibilities for figure skaters and hockey players.
The Olympics also served as a platform for promoters such as Jeff Robbins, of the Utah Sports Commission, to secure other events — from the Dew Tour to motocross.
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