Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Athletic Foundation Communications Manager Jennifer Clarke read me a list of people connected to Utah who have won a medal in Vancouver. It took a while.
She says there are plenty of reasons winter sports athletes come to Utah to train.
"(People come here because of) how close the venues are together, the locality of the airport and how easy it is for the athletes to get around," she said.
So how many Utahns won a medal in the 2010 Vancouver Games? That depends on how we define the word "Utahn." If we're talking about people who claim that their home town is in Utah, or they claim current residence in Utah, then we have five (six, if you count an Australian who lives here).
Five ties the overall medal count for Italy, Japan and Finland. It beats Australia, Slovakia, Belarus, Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Estonia and Great Britain.
Clarke says Utah has to be able to recruit new athletes and encourage children to follow in the footsteps of Olympic athletes to stay dominant.
"That's our legacy," she said. "That's why we consider ourselves a living Olympic legacy."
There are many Olympic athletes who claim residence somewhere else, but they do have homes in the Beehive State for their training. For instance, gold medal skiers Bill Demong and Lindsey Vonn have homes in Park City.
If we count all of them as Utahns, the Salt Lake Tribune says Utah's medal count is 26. That beats 23 other countries and ties Canada, which had the third highest medal count overall. Considering the U.S. received a record total of 37 medals, Utah had a very impressive showing.
Some sports fans think a lot of this dominance is a side effect of the 2002 Winter Games.
Ted Herbert, a tourist from Springfield, Mass., said, "I think the Olympics were, probably, the best thing that ever happened to the Salt Lake area."
Hebert has avoided visiting Utah for 10 years because he thought things were getting too "yuppie" in the 1990s. But, he says he's noticed a difference ever since the Salt Lake City games. He says the people seem a bit nicer than before. Plus, he thinks the infrastructure for Olympic training facilities is better here than in cities like Lake Placid.
"Lake Placid is just in the middle of ‘Nowheresland,' and I mean ‘Nowheresland,'" he said.
Since the 2002 games, U.S. speed skating has moved its governing body here. The USA Bobsled and Skeleton Federation is still headquartered in Lake Placid, but many of the athletes train in Utah.
Now, the trick is to capitalize on the fame these athletes received and see if the training facilities in Utah can get some international attention. U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association Vice President of Communications Tom Kelly says people around the world know who these athletes are now, but that won't last long.
"In a period of just weeks, they're going to forget about (these medal winners) and it's going to be another four years before these athletes really gain some notoriety again," he said.
Kelly says this is a tricky part of what he calls managing victory.
"It's really important to do it as quickly as possible after the Olympics so they can capitalize on that success right when the iron is hot," he explained.
In a way, you could say Utahns account for one third of Australia's medal count, also. Gold medal winning snowboarder Torah Bright lives in Salt Lake City.
E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com
