Salt Lake City Awarded 2034 Winter Olympics After Doping Case Intrudes

PARIS — Salt Lake City, where a brazen bribery scandal before the 2002 Winter Olympics helped change the way host cities are chosen, was given a second chance on Wednesday when it was named the site of the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

But its victory came only after a dramatic decision to revise the host-city contract that Salt Lake City and Utah officials had signed. That change would allow the International Olympic Committee to pull the Games if any effort were made to undermine the authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency, the global regulator of doping in sports.

The sudden adjustment came after several Olympic committee officials, while praising Salt Lake City’s bid before the vote in Paris, expressed anger at efforts by the U.S. authorities to investigate the actions of doping and swimming officials in the case of two dozen elite Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Those positive tests, revealed by a New York Times investigation this year, have raised questions about WADA’s ability and willingness to police doping in international sports. But it is the federal investigations into the case in the United States, which have already led to at least one subpoena, that have rattled top sports and doping officials.

John Coates, the IOC’s top legal official, said that the organization had altered the signed hosting agreement to grant it the right to “terminate Olympic host city contracts in cases where the supreme authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency in the fight against doping is not fully respected or if the application of the world anti-doping code is hindered or undermined.”

Salt Lake City officials confirmed that they had agreed to the changes and signed a revised agreement.

Travis Tygart, the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, criticized the doping agency again on Wednesday but also castigated the IOC for applying pressure on the Salt Lake City bid over what he said were “basic unanswered questions” in the Chinese swimming case.

“It is 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,” he said.

Gene Sykes, chair of the board of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said the change in the Salt Lake City bid contract was not meant to undermine the ongoing federal investigations into the Chinese swimming case, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency or an American doping law that can subject conspirators to criminal penalties at international sports competitions that involve athletes from the United States.

“I think everyone is committed to making WADA as strong as possible, no one more so than the USOPC,” Sykes said Wednesday in an interview. “We believe that all of what’s happened over the past several months is a constructive step toward making WADA stronger.”

A range of investigative action being taken in the United States has deeply bothered WADA. The FBI and Justice Department have opened up a criminal investigation into how the Chinese positive tests were handled, and agents working on that investigation tried to question a top swimming official when he was in the United States last month for the U.S. Olympic trials.

In response, WADA officials have moved a meeting scheduled to be held in the United States later this year to Canada, ensuring that its officials cannot be questioned by the American authorities. Along with the criminal investigation, Congress — which contributes a major portion of WADA’s budget — has at least two committees investigating the Chinese positives and has threatened to withhold financing if it does not receive answers to its questions.

Gov. Spencer J. Cox of Utah told IOC members before Wednesday’s vote that he would “work with the levers of power,” including in Congress, to “alleviate your concerns.”

Before he spoke, a succession of IOC officials took turns criticizing the United States for its actions in investigating sports doping outside the globally accepted system WADA runs.

WADA President Witold Banka declined an invitation this year to attend a congressional committee hearing that sought to find answers to how the Chinese swimmers were able to bypass regular anti-doping rules. The committee made a point of leaving his seat empty.

Much has changed since Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Games, which are primarily remembered for corruption in the bidding process and a scandal in the figure skating competition.

Two decades later, Salt Lake officials were able to convince the International Olympic Committee that they deserved another opportunity with a preliminary budget of about $4 billion. Two factors also eased its path: All of the permanent sports venues already exist from the 2002 Games, and there is widespread public support in Utah for a return.

Earlier Wednesday, a bid by the French regions of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur was provisionally chosen for the 2030 Winter Games, provided the hosts would fulfill certain conditions and requirements. Those Games will be centered on ski resorts in the French Alps and the southern city of Nice.

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, pledged his government’s support to clear any remaining financial and logistical hurdles. “We will be there,” he said, “and respect our commitments.”

Dismantled is the sordid Olympic bidding process, which predated Salt Lake City’s earlier effort, in which large numbers of IOC delegates visited potential host cities, often with their hands out, and were granted with financial and other favors in what amounted to revolving vote-buying schemes that preceded each Winter and Summer Games.

The bidding process no longer includes long lines of IOC members arriving in competing cities like Olympic trick-or-treaters. Instead, the IOC holds regular discussions with interested cities as candidates are winnowed. And then a so-called Future Games Commission, comprising roughly a dozen members, visits the preferred city or region and makes a recommendation to the IOC executive board.

Individual delegates still vote on the host city but essentially only to affirm a recommendation by the executive board.

Salt Lake City will have a decade to prepare for its Games, and officials have acknowledged that one of their main tasks will be to sustain public support. The continuing impact of climate change also will have to be taken into account.

Among the IOC’s concerns in amending its bidding rules were sustainable sporting venues and a reduction in the number of cities required to spend millions of dollars on their bids, even if they had little or no chance of winning.

Corruption has not been eliminated from the Olympic bid process, either. As of December 2023, two years after the Summer Games were held in Tokyo in 2021, bid-rigging trials were still taking place in Japan involving companies that organize, promote and market sporting events. Officials from the companies have been charged with violating anti-monopoly laws.

But there has rarely been an Olympic scandal as extensive as the one that emerged from Salt Lake City’s bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. Ten IOC members eventually resigned or were expelled, and another 10 received warnings for their willing acceptance of more than $1 million in cash payments, scholarships, free medical care and gifts as diverse as doorknobs and free trips to the Super Bowl. The revelations remain one of the most embarrassing chapters in the history of the modern Games.

Once the 2002 Games began, they were overshadowed by a scandal in pairs figure skating that caused the 6.0 scoring system to be abolished in favor of a more complicated mathematical system that awarded points for each jump and spin.

Fraser Bullock, chief executive of the 2034 Salt Lake City bid, who was brought in to help clean up the bidding scandal before the 2002 Games, said on Wednesday that a second chance to host the Winter Olympics was “another chance to validate that Utah is a fantastic place to host the Games.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .