IOC softens on dropping Salt Lake City as host

PARK CITY, Utah — In his first visit to Utah since awarding Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Games, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach sought to ease worries that the city could lose its second Olympics if organizers don’t fulfill an agreement to play peacemaker between anti-doping authorities.

Bach on Saturday downplayed the gravity of a termination clause the IOC inserted into Salt Lake City’s host contract in July that threatens to pull the 2034 Games if the U.S. government does not respect “the supreme authority” of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Olympic officials also extracted assurances from Utah politicians and U.S. Olympic leaders that they would urge the federal government to back down from an investigation into a suspected doping cover-up.

Utah bid leaders, already in Paris for the signing ceremony, hastily agreed to the IOC’s conditions to avoid delaying the much anticipated announcement.

Bach characterized the contract language Saturday as a demonstration of the IOC’s confidence that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency will fall in line with WADA. He implied that WADA, not the Olympic committee, would be responsible in the unlikely occasion that Salt Lake City loses the Winter Games.

“This clause is the advice to our friends in Salt Lake that a third party could make a decision which could have an impact on our partnership,” Bach said.

Tensions have grown between WADA and its American counterpart as the U.S. government has given itself greater authority to crack down on doping schemes at international events that involve American athletes. U.S. officials have used that power to investigate WADA after the global regulator declined to penalize nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

With its contract curveball, the IOC attempted to use its little leverage to ensure that WADA would be the lead authority on doping cases in Olympic sports when the U.S. hosts Games in 2028 and 2034.

Salt Lake City’s eagerness to become a repeat host — and part of a possible permanent rotation of Winter Olympic cities — is a lifeline for the IOC as climate change and high operational costs have reduced the number of cities willing and able to welcome the Winter Games. The Utah capital was the only candidate for 2034 after Olympic officials gave it exclusive negotiating rights last year.

Gene Sykes, chairman of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said he doesn’t view the late change to the host contract as a strong-arm tactic but rather a “reasonable accommodation” that secured the bid for Utah and brought him to the table as a mediator between agencies.

He expects the end result will be a stronger anti-doping system for all.

“It would have been incredibly disturbing if the Games had not been awarded at that time,” Sykes told The Associated Press. “There were 150 people in the Utah delegation who’d traveled to Paris for the single purpose of being there when the Games were awarded. So this allowed that to happen in a way that we still feel very confident does not put Utah at any real risk of losing the Games.”

“The IOC absolutely does not want to lose Utah in 2034,” he added.

Sykes is involved in an effort to help reduce tensions between WADA and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, while making sure the U.S. stands firm in its commitment to the world anti-doping system that WADA administers.

The White House’s director of national drug control policy, Rahul Gupta, sits on WADA’s executive committee, but the global agency this month has tried to bar Gupta from meetings about the Chinese swimmers case.

For Fraser Bullock, the president and CEO of Salt Lake City’s bid committee, any friction between regulators and government officials has not been felt on a local level. His decades-long friendship with Bach and other visiting Olympic leaders was on full display Saturday as he toured them around the Utah Olympic Park in Park City.

“There’s no tension — just excitement about the future of the Games and the wonderful venues and people of Utah,” Bullock told the AP. “We are 100%.”