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Keith McCord ReportingWhen the Olympics get going in Torino tomorrow, the organizers there will no doubt owe Salt Lake a bit of gratitude. Without the help of Utah, the Torino games could have been in big trouble. In terms of the venues and everything we see on TV, things in Torino should be fine, but there was a lot of hand-wringing a year ago, and Salt Lake came to the rescue.
The clock is counting down toward the Opening Ceremonies in Torino tomorrow night and workers are still scrambling to finish up. The medals plaza yesterday was still unfinished, but close to completion.
It's been a bumpy ride for the Torino Organizing Committee the past year. One man who knows that firsthand is Frasier Bullock, the former Salt Lake Olympic President.
Frasier Bullock: "And so the IOC asked me to fly over there and coach the new management and try to get them ready for the games."
In fact, he went twice. It was about a year ago. Torino's organizing committee fired its top two people, the CEO and the Chief Operating Officer. Management was in disarray, venues nowhere close to being done, and Torino's Olympic committee was millions of dollars short.
Frasier Bullock: "I went through a complete review of their operations. You know, here are all the operational things you need to do. It was a matter of priorities. They did get behind because of the budget struggle, so hopefully, I think it'll look very good on television."
Salt Lake's games in 2002 went off remarkably well. In the world Olympic community, our games really have become a model on how to do it right. In fact, when our games ended, SLOC put together a set of CD-ROMS detailing everything about our games, sort of a "How-to" guide for future Olympic cities.
Frasier Bullock: "So Athens had access to that, Torino had access to that, and so are future games. So that is being used as a template now for learning for future games. When you start an Olympic games, you haven't a clue as to what you're doing. And so you really have to learn all these things. And these really accelerated the learning, and so our tools have been used by every organizing committee since our games."
It was a nice gesture on behalf of Salt Lake City to be sure. Speaking of the 2002 games, beginning tomorrow, and each night throughout the Torino games, I'll help you re-live many of the events that went on here, with a series of reports called: "Our Olympics--A Look Back".
