What was expected to be a simple coronation of Salt Lake City as the 2034 Winter Olympic host turned into complicated Olympic politics on Wednesday, as the IOC pushed Utah officials to end an FBI investigation into a suspected doping coverup.
In a separate decision earlier in Paris, the 2030 Winter Games were awarded – with conditions – to France for a regional project split between ski resorts in the Alps and Nice. That project needs official signoff from the national government which is still being formed after elections in France earlier this month.
Regarding the Salt Lake City bid, the IOC is angry about an ongoing US federal investigation of suspected doping by Chinese swimmers who were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Games despite positive drug tests. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) accepted Chinese explanations for the tests, and US officials are now investigating that decision under an anti-conspiracy law passed after the Russian doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Games.
The IOC president, Thomas Bach, wants to make sure Wada is the sole authority on Olympic doping cases, especially with the Summer Olympics headed to Los Angeles in 2028. The IOC added a clause to Salt Lake’s host contract, demanding that local organizers – including Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox – push to shut down the federal investigation or risk losing the Olympics.
Cox, who is a Republican, and others promised to lobby the US president and Congress.
“We agree that if the United States does not support or violates the World Anti-Doping Federation’s rules, that they can withdraw the Games from from us and from the United States,” Cox said after the announcement. “That was the only way that that we could we could guarantee that we would get the Games.”
Even in the world Olympic diplomacy, it was a stunning power move to force government officials to publicly agree to lobby on the IOC’s behalf. After getting the Utah contingent’s agreement on the clause, the IOC formally awarded the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake in an 83-6 vote.
Salt Lake was the only candidate after the IOC gave Utah’s capital exclusive negotiating rights last year in a fast-tracked process. The clause inserted into the contract requires Utah officials to work with Joe Biden and future US presidents and members of Congress “to alleviate your concerns” about the federal investigation into doping. The IOC clause allows the Olympic body to terminate Salt Lake City’s deal if the authority of Wada is undermined on US territory.
Wada’s role is under scrutiny for accepting a Chinese investigation that declared all 23 of its swimmers were contaminated by traces of a banned heart medication in a hotel kitchen. Three Chinese gold medals in the Tokyo Olympic pool were won by swimmers implicated in the case. Some are also competing in Paris next week.
The case can be investigated in the US under federal legislation named for a whistleblower of Russian state doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. The IOC and Wada lobbied against the law, known as the Rodchenkov Act, which gives US federal agencies wide jurisdiction of doping enforcement worldwide before Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Games.
“We will work with our members of Congress,” Cox told Bach and IOC voters before the 2034 vote, “we will use all the levers of power open to us to resolve these concerns.”
Salt Lake City first hosted the Winter Games in 2002. That bid was hit with a bribery scandal, which led to anti-corruption reforms at the IOC. For its second turn, Salt Lake City will get almost 10 full years to prepare – the longest lead-in for a modern Winter Games – amid longer-term concerns about climate change affecting snow sports and reducing the pool of potential hosts.
Salt Lake City opted to target 2034 and thereby avoided potential commercial and logistical clashes with the LA 2028 Summer Games.
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