PARIS — You’ll always remember where you were for the big events, right?
After traveling more than 5,000 miles to be in Le Palais des Congres de Paris for the International Olympic Committee’s decision on whether to give Utah the 2034 Winter Games, I was sitting on the floor of a crowded makeshift holding area outside the meeting when the announcement came.
I glimpsed some of the excitement expressed by members of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games being livestreamed on a colleague’s laptop between texting editors and checking the Deseret.com website to see if the story I’d pre-written in the event of a win had posted.
The rest of the day was a blur of interviews, news conferences and an Uber ride with Deseret News Editor Sarah Jane Weaver to USA House, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s gathering place for Team USA supporters, where a private party celebrating the award was underway.
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By the time I’d finished updating my stories late that night — alas, without any color from the party since news media couldn’t get in — the time difference and lack of sleep had caught up with me. It would be another day before I’d see the photos capturing the moment more than a decade of bidding paid off for the Utahns determined to bring the Olympics back.
Attendees cheer after the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2034 Winter Olympic Games to the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee during a live watch party held at the Salt Lake City and County Building in Washington Square Park on Wednesday, July 24, 2024, in downtown Salt Lake City. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
I’ve seen that joy before. And the tense smiles when bidders see a Games go somewhere else.
I’ve been covering Utah’s Olympic dreams long enough that when our public relations team asked me for the date when I first got the assignment, I paused. I know I was there in Birmingham, England, in June 1991, when Salt Lake City saw the 1998 Winter Games go to Nagano, Japan.
And I know my first story when I took over the beat was about how the proposed budget for a 1998 Olympics had doubled. Was it 1991 when the leader of that bid, Tom Welch, tried to talk me out of writing about the escalating budget? Or was it even earlier? “Maybe we should say the early 1990s,” I ended up telling the PR team.
I wish I’d had time to dig out the copies of those stories clipped from the Deseret News that I’m sure are somewhere in my basement. Mostly what I remember from Birmingham all these years later is thinking then that I’d enjoyed covering the bid while it lasted and expected to move on to another assignment since clearly this one was finished.
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Instead, I’ve ended up writing about Utah and the Olympics for more than three decades. It’s taken me around the world, to every continent but Antartica. In 1995, I had a better view in Budapest, Hungary, of the bid team leaping out of their seats when then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch announced the 2002 Winter Games were going to “the city of Salt Lake City.”
There are plenty of other stories I could tell, too, like watching the world’s press descend on the IOC’s Lausanne, Switzerland, headquarters amid the escalating bribery scandal involving Salt Lake City’s 2002 bid. Or about talking with Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, then the leader of the 2002 Winter Games, as he drove past a smoldering Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
But what’s really stuck with me over the years is something I first wrote about 22 years ago, how much the Olympics can mean to those welcoming the world to their hometowns. That was most evident to me the morning after a bomb tore through a downtown park filled with thousands of people during the 1996 Atlanta Games, killing one and injuring more than 100.
As I recall, I was wandering around the mostly deserted streets nearby when I ran into a young family who wanted to see for themselves what someone — it turned out to be a domestic terrorist who wouldn’t be caught until 2003 — had done to their city before heading to see an Olympic event.
Here’s how I described our conversation in that March 2002 news story:
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I asked them if they were afraid to be downtown. Although Olympic officials had said hours earlier that the Games would go on, no one could guarantee that the bomber wouldn’t strike again.
The night before, the streets had been filled with civilian and military authorities while helicopters buzzed overhead. I later described it as being as close to a war zone as I’d ever expected to see in the United States. Even in the daylight, the scene was eerie. Downtown was deserted as investigators descended on the now-closed park.
But the family said it was important for them to be there. Not just to attend the event they’d purchased tickets for but also to show their support for the Olympics, which had brought the world to their home.
They started asking me questions about what I thought of the Games, which had already been criticized for transportation and technology troubles, as well as for the tacky street vendors throughout downtown.
They also wanted to know what competitions I’d seen. None, I told them. My assignment was to cover organizational issues of the Games. I recall that we talked for a few more minutes, and then the family headed off to their event. Then one of them — I believe it was the mother — returned.
She asked me to take one of their tickets and go to the event with them. She told me I needed to see what the Olympics were really about and, well, have some fun.
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I didn’t accept her offer, but I’ll never forget it.
It showed me how much it means to residents of an Olympic city that visitors enjoy themselves and leave having some sense of what makes that city a special place to those who call it home.
What also stuck with me was the family’s determination to leave the safety of the suburbs that day. They didn’t want their empty seats to suggest that the bomber had succeeded in destroying the spirit of the Games.
And for the record, I still remember where I was when the bombing occurred around 1:20 a.m., sound asleep in my hotel room miles outside of Atlanta. I ended up catching a ride downtown with a member of a foreign TV crew that spoke no English and waited hours on the street for any news. Then we heard the media center was reopening for a news conference.
I was stuck in the middle of a huge mob of media from around the world waiting to get through a security checkpoint when the news conference was about to start. Somehow, I was spotted by a contact from the Atlanta organizing committee who whisked me into the media center.
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So I was able to be there when Olympic officials announced the Games would continue, able to experience — and, hopefully, convey — the resilience it takes for a Games host to have invited the world to see not just sports competitions, but also a community and its values.
The Utahns who have worked so hard over the years to bring the Games to the state not just once, but now twice, have always believed this is the place that offers something special to the rest of the world. Their determination to showcase what they want others to love as much as they do about Utah is really what I’ve been covering all these years.
That’s also what I’ll be writing about as Utah gets ready for the 2034 Winter Games, collecting another decade of Olympic memories.
Utah lawmakers will consider changes to how recently-retired public employees are paid if they later choose to work or volunteer as emergency responders during the upcoming legislative session.
The change is largely administrative, Kory Cox, director of legislative and government affairs for the Utah Retirement System, told lawmakers on Tuesday.The proposed bill would change the compensation limit for first responders like volunteer firefighters, search and rescue personnel and reserve law enforcement, from $500 per month to roughly $20,000 per year.
Some public employees already serve as first responders in addition to their day jobs, Cox and other advocates told the Retirement and Independent Entities Interim Committee at a hearing Tuesday. The current statute has forced those employees to put their service on hold after they retire in order to keep their retirement benefits.
Volunteer firefighters do get paid, despite what their title suggests. Volunteer organizations pay their emergency responders every six months, said Cedar City Fire Chief Mike Phillips, so their paychecks almost always amount to more than $500. Switching from a monthly compensation limit to an annual compensation limit means new retirees can keep up their service, or take up new service, without jeopardizing their retirement benefits.
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“As volunteer agencies, a lot of our employees are government employees,” said Cedar City Fire Chief Mike Phillips. “They work for county and state governments because they allow them to leave their employment to come help us fight fires.”
Clint Smith, Draper City fire chief and president of the Utah State Fire Chiefs Association, told lawmakers Tuesday that volunteerism, “especially in rural volunteer fire agencies,” but also across Utah and the United States, is “decreasing dramatically.”
The National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) reported 676,900 volunteer firefighters in the United States, down from 897,750 when the agency started keeping track in 1984. A U.S. Fire Administrations guide book about retention and recruitment for volunteer firefighters published last year wrote that the decline “took place while the United States population grew from nearly 236 million to over 331 million in the same time frame, indicating that volunteerism in the fire and emergency services has not kept pace with population growth.”
The consequences, the guide says, are “dire.”
Roughly 64% of Utah’s fire agencies are volunteer-only, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.
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“Anything we can do to help make sure that [volunteers] are not penalized when they separate from their full regular [employment] with the state, to be able to still act in that volunteer capacity is vital to the security and safety of our communities,” Smith said Tuesday.
It was an easy sell for lawmakers. The committee voted unanimously to adopt the bill as a committee bill in the 2025 legislative session with a favorable recommendation.
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainabilityfor The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
The Utah State Aggies just grabbed a statement win.
Through four games under new head coach Jerrod Calhoun, the Utah State Aggies had looked impressive, averaging exactly 104 points per game and a margin of victory of exactly 40 points in four wins.
The thing was, the Aggies didn’t play any team that is expected to be near their level, as Alcorn State, Westminster and Montana all play in lesser conferences than the Mountain West and Charlotte was picked to finish eighth in the 13-team AAC, which is considered about on par with the MW.
Finally on Friday night, Utah State faced a team in the Iowa Hawkeyes of the Big Ten that not only was more its equal, but was thought to be better, and accordingly was considered a comfortable favorite.
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With the contest being played on a neutral floor in Kansas City, Utah State kept things close for the first 28 minutes or so and then used a surge to take the lead partway through the second half and held on down the stretch to claim the 77-69 victory and move to 5-0 on the season.
With the loss, an Iowa team that is considered to be a potential NCAA Tournament squad moved to 5-1 on the campaign.
The Aggies got off to a nice start and led for most of the first 10 minutes of the game. Things were pretty even throughout most of the rest of the first half, though Iowa put together a little run and led by four at halftime.
At the 12:52 mark of the second half the Hawkeyes went up by four on a dunk from leading scorer Payton Sandfort, but the Aggies responded with a 9-0 run over the next 3:42 to go up by five, 58-53.
Things stayed close for the next few minutes but Iowa never got closer than a point and Utah State created some distance, largely behind Mason Falslev and Karson Templin.
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A dunk from Central Arkansas transfer Tucker Anderson with 54 seconds to play quelled any remaining chance the Hawkeyes had at a comeback after they had cut the deficit from seven to four on a 3 by Brock Harding.
Falslev led all scorers with 25 points and finished with a double-double, as he added 12 rebounds to go along with three assists, two steals and a block.
Ian Martinez added 13 points and Anderson finished with 10. That pair stuffed the stat sheet, combining for 11 rebounds, eight steals, seven assists, and two blocks.
Team-wise, things were rather even statistically except for rebounds and fast break points. The Aggies outrebounded the Hawkeyes 47-31 and scored 21 fast break points compared to just four for Iowa.
Next up for Utah State is a Thanksgiving Day game against St. Bonaventure at Disney World.
TAYLORSVILLE — Four new cases of avian flu outbreaks have been reported in Utah, affecting three Piute County turkey facilities, the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food said in a press release.
“Between November 10 to 19, 2024, three turkey farms in Piute County totaling 107,800 turkeys and one backyard flock of 253 birds in Salt Lake County were confirmed positive for HPAI,” the department said. “Though the overall risk to public health remains low, HPAI is a serious disease, requiring rapid response, including depopulation of affected flocks as it is highly contagious and fatal to poultry.”
There are currently five poultry farms in Utah under quarantine, according to the department.
“In the backyard flock because it’s so deadly, all but 33 birds died. All the turkeys are being depopulated because it’s highly contagious,” said Caroline Hargraves with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.
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Officials said affected birds were depopulated within 24 hours of the reported outbreaks, and that impacts on food supply are expected to be limited.
“State and federal personnel are on-site to ensure all requirements for disinfection and proper disposal are followed,” the department said.
Officials said that poultry owners should “practice strong biosecurity and monitor flocks for signs of illness.”
The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food asked poultry owners to report sick birds to the State Veterinarian’s Office at statevet@utah.gov. They also said that people interacting with sick birds should take special precautions including using personal protective equipment.
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