Salt Lake's Olympic Legacy Said to Be Strong

Aug 25, 2008 by Eric Ray

(KCPW News) As the curtain falls on the Beijing Summer Olympics, an official from the 2002 Winter games is touting the city's own Olympic legacy. Fraser Bullock, who served as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee, says prior to 2002 people were either unaware of Salt Lake City or focused on the bribery scandal surrounding the games.

"After the games it was a completely different story. We became an Olympic city that put on world-class games. When I would travel around the world and tell them I was from Salt Lake City, they would say ‘thank you, those were wonderful games.' Every place I went they knew who we were, and they knew how great a games we had experienced, how warm and friendly the people were. There was never a mention or a thought about the bribery," says Bullock.

Bullock says another part of Salt Lake City's Olympic legacy is the venues built for the games. In many Olympic cities, the venues are either torn down or are no longer used for the types of competitions they were built for. But Bullock says that's not the case here.

"Every one of our Olympic venues is still being utilized today. From our surplus we were able to put up an endowment of about $76 million that has grown to the low 80s at this point. The idea there is that the interest from that can support the operations," says Bullock.

Bullock says the next step is to ramp up youth programs at the facilities to build the next generation of Olympic athletes. To listen to a longer conversation about the legacy of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, download a podcast of Friday's Public Square.

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