The group pursuing the 2034 Winter Olympics for the state on Monday released the most complete concept map to date of the proposed competition venues, detailing which disciplines it wants to locate in the Park City area and elsewhere in the Games region.
The Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games included the map in a broader submittal to the International Olympic Committee as the Lausanne, Switzerland-based organization and the bidders in Utah prepare for the likelihood of the Games of 2034 being awarded to Salt Lake City in July. The submittal covers the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games’ responses to the IOC’s Future Host Questionnaire and provides information about topics across the bid.
It has been certain the Park City area would play an outsized role in the map of the venues, as was the case during the 2002 Winter Olympics, but the precise list of competitions that would be proposed for the individual venues has been unclear.
According to materials filed as part of the Future Host Questionnaire responses, the proposed Park City-area venue map includes the following:
• Park City Mountain hosting snowboarding halfpipe, snowboarding slopestyle, freestyle skiing halfpipe and freestyle skiing slopestyle.
• Deer Valley Resort hosting freestyle skiing aerials and freestyle skiing moguls.
• The Utah Olympic Park hosting ski jumping, the jumping portion of the Nordic combined, bobsled, luge, skeleton, snowboarding parallel giant slalom, snowboard cross and freestyle skiing ski cross.
Soldier Hollow in nearby Wasatch County is slated to host the cross-country skiing portion of the Nordic combined, biathlon and cross-country skiing. Snowbasin, in northern Utah, would host the ski-racing events in both the speed and technical disciplines.
There could be alterations to the map as an eventual organizing committee finalizes the venue list, but the concept that is proposed in the submittal appears to have been crafted over time and includes significant changes from the program during the Games of 2002. Park City Mountain and Deer Valley each hosted ski racing in the earlier Games, one of the prime examples of the differences between the two years.
The venue map is critical to the rest of the planning since so much of the infrastructure of a Games will be based on the locations of the competitions. The map will influence the blueprints for transportation, parking, security, staffing and celebrations in and around Park City. It will also be crucial as the competition grid is ultimately created, which will identify the dates and times of the events.
The submission illustrates the progress the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games is making with the meetings of the IOC in Paris in July nearing. The IOC in July is widely expected to award the 2034 event to Salt Lake City and the 2030 Games to the Provence, Alps and Côte d’Azur regions of France. The Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games as recently as April had indicated the precise skiing and snowboarding competitions slated for Park City Mountain and the Utah Olympic Park had not been determined by then.
