Salt Lake City will host the Winter Olympics in 2034, the International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday, bringing the Games back to the Utah capital 32 years after its first hosting stint. For months, Salt Lake City has been the targeted host city for 2034 as climate change, ballooning costs and infrastructure challenges have led the IOC to ditch its old bidding process in favor of seeking out suitable host cities, particularly for the Winter Games. The city’s bid emphasized the array of venues still in use three decades after it last hosted; no new permanent venue construction is planned.
Advertisement With Los Angeles set to host the Summer Olympics in 2028, it means the Games will return to the U.S. just six years later.
That will happen in France too as the IOC also announced Wednesday the French Alps will host the 2030 Winter Games, bringing the Olympics back to the country just six years after the Paris Summer Games, set to begin Friday. Wednesday’s vote comes with the condition that France meets certain financial guarantees that have not been possible to secure because of the recent elections in the country. French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged the necessary commitment.
We’re already clearing our calendars for the 2030 and 2034 Winter Olympics! 🗓️❄️ #FrenchAlps2030 | #SLCUT2034 pic.twitter.com/Yy3VLDcE74 — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 24, 2024 “Seven years ago we made the same commitment (for Paris 2024), and we delivered,” Macron said, per the BBC .
“We will do the same.” Under the 2030 bid, the regions of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, in the country’s southeastern corner, would serve as hosts. The area has hosted the Winter Olympics three times before, most recently in Albertville in 1992.
The next decade’s worth of Olympics hosts are now set. Milan and Cortina, Italy, have the 2026 Winter Games, and Brisbane, Australia, will host the 2032 Summer Games. Why now? The IOC used to award an Olympic Games seven years ahead of schedule.
That all changed in 2017, when Los Angeles and Paris were bidding for the 2024 Summer Games that will officially begin Friday. The leaders of the IOC realized they had two great candidate cities, so they changed their rules to allow for a double award. Also, the IOC shifted its strategy of selecting the next host cities.
Instead of opening the bidding and waiting to see who showed up, it decided to target specific cities and begin discussions with them. Advertisement The expensive, unpredictable, corruption-laden beauty contests of old don’t happen anymore in large part because the IOC ended up with three consecutive Olympic Games in Asia, which was a bad look for a global sports organization and bad for business as television ratings in the U.S.
dwindled. Originally, both the French Alps and Salt Lake City wanted to host the Games in 2030. The IOC decided, through negotiations, to do a double-award and clinched deals with both locations months ago, giving Salt Lake City a full decade to prepare for the Games.
Also, the Summer Games will take place in Los Angeles in 2028. Holding the Winter Games 500 miles away two years later didn’t make a lot of sense. What it means Western Europe has long dominated the IOC.
Its co-founder, Pierre de Coubertin, known as the father of the modern Olympic Games, was French. The Winter Games especially have their cultural roots in Europe. Anytime the IOC puts an Olympics in that region, there is a sense that it is coming home.
The flip side of that is that the organization is giving up the chance to explore a new area and cultivate new fans. The IOC has argued that it did plenty of that the past decade. Sochi (2014), Rio (2016), and Pyeongchang (2018) were all first-time hosts.
South Korea had never hosted a Winter Games, nor had Beijing before 2022. For the time being, new ventures will have to wait. The bigger picture For years, people have been pushing the IOC to move toward rotating the Winter Games to cities that have hosted them before.
The cost savings can be enormous. No one has to build a new bobsled run. The Winter Games took place in Salt Lake City in 2002 and in the French Alps in 1992 in Albertville.
Sapporo, Japan, which previously hosted the Games, has expressed interest in bringing them back. Same goes for Vancouver, the host in 2010. Advertisement As yet there is no formal rotation set up, but that may happen organically.
With climate change, there are fewer and fewer places that can reliably host the outdoor snow competitions. Going to places that have done it before makes a lot of sense. (Photo of the Salt Lake City contingent, including Olympic champion skiier Lindsey Vonn at far right, celebrating Wednesday’s news: Arturo Holmes / Getty Images).
