Salt Lake City Will Host the 2034 Winter Olympics: Learn How the U.S. City Was Chosen
We might only be one day away from the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France, and what will surely be an impressive opening ceremony, but the International Olympic Committee is already planning for the year 2034. As of July 24, 2024, the 2034 Winter Olympic Games will be held in … drum roll please …Salt Lake City, Utah! That’s right, the Winter Games are heading back to the United States, and we found out everything you need to know about the Games, including surprising controversy. Keep reading for more.
All about the 2034 Winter Olympic Games
The 2034 Winter Olympic Games — or the XXVII Olympic Winter Games — will be hosted by Salt Lake City from Friday, February 10, 2034, until Sunday, February 26, 2034. It will be the third city in United States history to host the Games more than once.
The Utah capitol first hosted the Games back in 2002, with many of the buildings constructed for the Olympic events still standing tall.
“I think it's a lot to do with sustainability,” Lindsey Vonn told PEOPLE about the decision to bring the Games back to Utah. Vonn is a former Olympic alpine skier and member of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games.
Says Vonn: “When we had the Olympics in 2002, they created an endowment to help maintain all of the Olympic venues. And we host international competitions at pretty much every venue every year. And all of our venues are incredibly well maintained, and that's not normal.”
The 2034 Games will be the second that the United States is hosting within a 10-year period, as Los Angeles, California, is set to host the Summer Games in 2028.
The 2028 Summer Olympic Games will take place from Friday, Jul 14, 2028, until Sunday, Jul 30, 2028.
The controversy of the 2034 Summer Olympic Games
C. Morgan Engel / Stringer/Getty
The International Olympic Committee awarded the 2034 Games bid to the United States — more specifically, Salt Lake City — if the U.S. agreed to stop investigating the 2021 Chinese doping scandal.
However, many detest that bargain, with the United States Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart saying of the decision, “It is shocking to see the International Olympic Committee (IOC) itself stooping to threats in an apparent effort to silence those seeking answers to what are now known as facts.”
The Chinese doping scandal took place at the 2020 Olympic Games. It came after The New York Times revealed that 23 swimmers from China received positive tests for various performance-enhancing drugs. The Chinese athletes were never eliminated from the Games, however, as executives from the country cleared them. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) never investigated.
The situation prompted the U.S. Justice Department and FBI to investigate how the entire situation was handled by both the WADA and the International Olympic Committee. Now that the Games are being held in the United States, the investigation into the circumstances that led to the athletes testing positive has to be dropped.
“It seems more apparent than ever that WADA violated the rules and needs accountability and reform to truly be the global watchdog that clean athletes need,” says Tygart.
Where are the other Olympic Games being held?
As previously mentioned, the 2024 Summer Olympic Games will be held in Paris. Then, athletes will head back to Europe for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan. After that, the next Summer Games will be held in Los Angeles, California, in 2028. The 2030 Winter Olympics will be in the French Alps, which will be followed by the Brisbane, Australia, 2032 Summer Games.
All of the excitement will lead up to the 2034 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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