Salt Lake City enlists Lindsey Vonn to promote 2030 bid in trip to IOC headquarters

Lindsey Vonn is back in competition. This time the race is a team event as the 2010 Olympic gold medalist in downhill skiing joins Salt Lake City in its quest to win another Winter Olympic Games.

Vonn will be part of a five-member delegation from the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games as it meets with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland later this month. The 2002 host city is in the dialogue phase with the IOC. Sapporo and Vancouver are thought to be its top rivals at this stage as a Spanish bid by Barcelona and the Pyrenees has issues over venue locations.

The Utah capital is bidding for 2030, but would also welcome a chance to host the 2034 Games if the IOC balks at hosting back-to-back Games in the United States. Los Angeles is staging the 2028 Summer Games.

Vonn, who lives in Park City, the site of the Olympic and Paralympic alpine events, definitely gives the bid group star power. The 37-year-old made her Olympic debut in 2002 as a 17-year-old and went on to become the most successful female alpine racer in World Cup history.

She is a four-time Olympian and three-time medalist, capping her Games career with a bronze in the downhill in 2018.

”They’ll be paying a lot more attention to her than they will to us,” Fraser Bullock, the president and CEO of the bid committee, told the Salt Lake Tribune.

Vonn, who retired in 2019 from competitive skiing, became one of 10 athletes named to the Salt Lake City-Utah group’s strategic governing board last year.

Catherine Raney-Norman, the committee chair and a four-time Olympic speedskater told the Salt Lake Tribune the best part of her role is inviting other athletes to be part of the bid process.

She said Vonn “was instantaneously, ‘Absolutely! How can I be involved? This is something I’m passionate about.’

”And so just to have her as a part of this effort is amazing, right? And for her to be championing what we’re trying to do and to make time in her schedule to come with us. I think she’s going to share an incredibly unique experience as an athlete, as a global leader in sport, as a champion of mental health. And I think it’s going to be a huge thing.”

The IOC is expected to choose one or more candidate cities for its next phase of dialogue and negotiations in December. The host city election for 2030 — and possibly 2034 if the IOC emulates the Paris 2024/Los Angeles 2028 model — could take place during the IOC session in Mumbai in late May or early June.

Bullock told the Salt Lake Tribune Vonn, as the “most successful female competitive skier in history,” is “well known and well respected. And so her voice carries weight, and it’s important. And the fact that she’s willing to take the time to go with us and spend time advocating for us shows that she believes that Salt Lake would be a great host.

”Salt Lake City holds a special place in Vonn’s heart.

”As soon as they announced Salt Lake City would host the Olympic Winter Games in 2002, I tried to make a plan with my dad on how I could make it there, so we were focused on that for a long time,” Vonn told Olympics.com. “It’s always a dream until it becomes a reality, so I wasn’t sure that it would happen, but I was thankful that it did. And it was incredible; I have so many great memories from those Games. Walking in the Opening Ceremony was incredibly emotional for everyone and I experienced an immense feeling of pride to be American at that moment. It was more than I ever dreamed of.”

Vonn, who on Monday was named one of the inductees into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame, went on to race in three of the next four Games. She missed 2014 in Sochi due to injury.

Her resilience in coming back from a knee injury to win a medal in PyeongChang in 2018 so impressed IOC president Thomas Bach he invited her to join him during the closing ceremony in thanking the people of South Korea.

Bach told USA Today in 2015, “Ninety percent of athletes being in this position would have said, ‘OK, this is it. I would have loved to have another end to my career, but it’s finished. To take this decision, to be back and to be back in this form, now being the most successful skier ever, it’s a great achievement.

”I’m really full of admiration.”

The Salt Lake City bid committee hopes the IOC will look with similar favor on its proposal to host the Games.

”We’ll have a pretty good idea where things stand, really, six months from now,” Bullock said during the board meeting. “So this is the intense part of the bid process. We’ve been extremely well-prepared. We’ve done so much work in advance that we feel very comfortable with where we are today.”

He added Utah has a “very, very strong bid proposal. We think we have the best technical bid in the world, of any potential Winter Games. You all know the reasons why. Everything’s in place. The people are in place. We have incredibly great support. So all of that bodes very well for us.”

An IOC study found Utah still uses all of its venues, a status it shares with Vancouver. Salt Lake City also touts that it netted a profit — which exceeded Vancouver’s in 2010 — and Bullock is one of many carry-overs from the 2002 Games.

”We are focused on 2030,” Bullock said. “Everything we do, every contract we sign, is all focused on 2030. But it also has a provision for 2034.”

The Salt Lake City group will try to convince the IOC the Los Angeles 2028 Games will not be a sticking point, although Bullock allowed the “Games are seen as something that they want to rotate around.” No nation has hosted back-to-back Olympics since Germany hosted the 1936 Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen followed by the Summer Games in Berlin.

”We recognize the back-to-back Games are challenging,” Bullock said. “Geopolitically, it’s hard for the IOC to award back-to-back Games in the U.S., for ‘28 and for ‘30. We know that that’s hard. But we also recognize there are opportunities through back-to-back Games. We’re continuing to work through those issues and press our case.”

And Vonn will be doing some of the talking.