SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s Olympic organizers saw more than just the expected sights during the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.
Besides the iconic locations that served as backdrops for Olympic events, like the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde and the Grand Palais, the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games’ bid lead, Darren Hughes, toured the free “Clubs 2024″ live site set up in a low-income northeast Paris neighborhood with a large African immigrant population.
Hughes, responsible for pulling together the details of Utah’s successful bid for the 2034 Winter Games, went to the Jardins d’Éole park that’s built on a reclaimed rail yard as part of the International Olympic Committee’s observer program for future Olympic hosts.
More than 400 people participated in the program in Paris, including more than a half-dozen from Utah.
Paris organizers helped the public feel like a part of the Olympics through efforts like the live sites set up throughout France, that Hughes said most impressed during the behind-the-scenes look at running the 2024 Summer Games. It’s something he hopes to replicate in all of Utah’s 29 counties when the state hosts in a decade.
“I think we can definitely learn from the ways that they were activating across the city and bringing the Games to the people,” Hughes said, especially at locations in each of the city’s 20 arrondissements, or administrative districts, where people could watch live coverage of the Games together.
The neighborhood park site he visited had “a festival type environment. Over here was this giant screen, bean bags and lounge chairs. So people were just there during the Games. They also had a stage nearby for really local talent,” along with food vendors and sports activities on a recently completed court built as part of a French government Olympic initiative.
While the site in the 18th arrondissement was open to everyone, security screening was required to enter, Hughes said.
“So it was a safe environment. You saw a lot of families there,” he said, enjoying blues music played by a neighborhood band and Ethiopian food. “Just like a really fun, comfortable environment … a neighborhood-level celebration with the Games as a backdrop. I thought that was really fun, really well done.”
Other sites, such as the one near the Paris City Hall, “had a little more corporate feeling,” Hughes said. “It didn’t quite have that unique character that sort of brought the Games to the neighborhood. See what I mean? It was just one more place where the celebration was going on. It wasn’t bad. It just didn’t have that wow.”
Will there be free live sites at Utah’s 2034 Winter Games?
It remains to be seen what live sites there would be during the 2034 Winter Games. When Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Games, the sole official site was in downtown Salt Lake City, where nightly concerts and medals award ceremonies were held on a temporary stage framed by the Hoberman Arch that was recently installed at the Salt Lake City International Airport.
Utah’s free Olympic Square in 2002 was spread over eight blocks and also included a Winter Games superstore selling T-shirts, stuffed toy mascots and other souvenirs, as well as corporate sponsor exhibits. Getting in to the area required passing through a security checkpoint.
Next time around, there will be more opportunities for the public to share in the Olympic experience, said Fraser Bullock, the 2034 committee’s president and CEO. Bullock served as the chief operating officer of Utah’s 2002 Winter Games.
With so many live sites, Paris provided plenty of places for “people to come together and rub shoulders. They didn’t always have to go downtown. They could go into a community area and watch the Games,” Bullock said. “They made the Games a very deep experience for the community, not just at the competitions.”
In 2034, he said Olympic organizers want to engage all of Utah, not just the Wasatch Front and Wasatch Back communities where venues are located. Utah’s Winter Games will once again be one of the most compact, with every venue located within an hour of the athlete housing at the University of Utah.
“Ideally, we’d have a live site in each county where people would … be cheering on Team USA or Utah’s athletes together and experiencing the Games even though they don’t have tickets to an event. They can have an elevated experience,” Bullock said. “It follows the notion Paris has of public engagement. How do we take that to the next level?”
That likely means more than just live sites. Paris also held a number of free exhibitions and sports demonstrations, including by local athletes in between Olympic competitions at the temporary skateboarding venue, part of what French organizers called Parc Urban at the Place de la Concorde in the hear of the city.
“They would put on a show. So you get youth sport involved and you get free experiences for the public,” Bullock said.
