The Summit County government is sending a small delegation to the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics next month to speak with local officials about their experience hosting the international event.
County Manager Shayne Scott on Monday confirmed he and Summit County Councilor Tonja Hanson are flying to Venice on Feb. 10, with plans to return on Feb. 18. The trip is an observers program organized by the International Olympic Committee, and Scott said he’s still waiting on final itinerary details to learn the specifics of who the Summit County representatives will meet while abroad.
“We’re excited and anxious to see some of the behind-the-scenes work,” Scott said. “I know several folks went to the Games in the summer of ’24 in France, and they saw a lot of good details around volunteerism and branding and events.”
Scott said Summit County will be more involved in the 2034 Games than it was with the 2002 Games, which is why county staff needs to start participating in the planning process now.
“Summit County has, in the past, struggled to have individuals with the state recognize that we’re not Park City,” Scott added. “We’re very close to Park City, and in a lot of ways, we are very similar, but we aren’t the same organization. We don’t want to say, ‘Oh, Park City is there, and they’re representing us.’ We need to do that on our own.”
Park City is sending three people — Mayor Ryan Dickey, City Councilor Tana Toly and acting City Manager Jodi Emery — to next month’s Winter Olympics as part of the same program, although both the city and the county are expected to incur some of their own costs. Scott said he expects their time in Italy to overlap, but he’s not sure if they’ll be traveling to the same sites together.
Scott said the Summit County delegation plans to focus on transportation strategies while overseas. The County Council late last year passed a $99 million bond to fund infrastructure improvements in the Snyderville Basin, partly in anticipation of the 2034 Winter Olympics.
The Utah Department of Transportation has also earmarked the Kimball Junction interchange as an area in need of improvement, and traffic congestion in the Snyderville Basin has long been a running concern in Wasatch Back discussions regarding the 2034 Games.
“We believe that, in the county, we’re going to have a very different Kimball Junction in 2034,” Scott said. “We hope to really energize that area, and I would love to see some ways in which they’re doing the same thing in Italy, accommodating the people who are there and engaging them in the community.”
Scott said Cortina d’Apezzo seems like a beneficial city to study during the Games because it’s a smaller town near a larger metropolitan area, similar to Park City’s relationship with Salt Lake City. He said he hopes to analyze how local officials tackled their own issues with traffic congestion, in addition to parking, shuttles, security and other logistical concerns.
“In France, they said everybody was wearing the same shirt, and that feels like such a small thing, but everybody knew to go to one of those individuals wearing a certain shirt to ask questions and to get directions,” Scott said. “It’s little things like that for us to bring back and understand how best to manage the Games here in Utah.”
The 2026 Games are one opportunity for local officials to study a Winter Olympics before 2034, the other being the 2030 Games in the French Alps. Summit County will likely continue to send representatives to other Games before then, including the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Brisbane, Australia, will also host the 2032 Summer Games.
Scott said transportation is the focus for Italy, but it may be possible — and beneficial — to send Sheriff Kacey Bates to Los Angeles for the Games to better prepare local law enforcement.
“People often think that because it’s the Olympics, the federal government comes in and does all of that,” Scott said. “They’re very instrumental and crucial, but our local law enforcement is going to be so important to the safety and security that we have. … We’ll have an emergency operations center active during the entire Games, which will require such a large law enforcement presence to be able to manage that, and I would love to have Kacey see what that’s like.”
Summit County and the Park City area are crucial for the 2034 Games. Park City Mountain, Deer Valley Resort and the Utah Olympic Park have already been identified as competitor venues.
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