The Utah Winter Olympic Park

Male: The first American to travel the Indian-Mexican owned territory what is now Utah, was a track following the course of the Bear River, Jim Bridger sited the Salt Lake Valley on his script in 1825. 21 years later in 1846, a group of Mormons lead by Brigham Young settled in the Salt Lake Valley, persecuted in the mid-west, the members of the faith were moving into the untamed west where they could pursue their religion and make a life for themselves. The US gain possession of the land by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican War. A couple of years later, it was major territory, Brigham Young was appointed governor. The territory of Utah was a wild, untamed, miracle of nature where deer, elk, moose, and bear roam the hills, valleys and prairies, in numbers never drifted in the Midwest. Over 150 years later in 2002, the Winter Olympics brought Utah the world attention, without question one of the great winter sports wonderlands of the west validating the state’s slogan of “The greatest snow on earth.” Frank Zang: You are at the Utah Olympic Park. This was the home of 2002 Olympic Winter Games. We had 14 gold-medal events here and more than 300,000 visitors over a 17-day period. And if you watched the Olympics on television, you probably saw some ski-jumping competition, bobsled, skeleton, Luge and part of the Nordic combined, those were all the events that were hosted here in February of 2002. People didn’t know where Utah was, or Salt Lake City until it was broadcasted across the world as the site of the 2002 games, and you’ll see that there’s some great snow here, and now that there’s a great Olympic tradition as well. There were 10 competition sites built for the Olympic games and most of them were reverted back to what they were before, Park City Mountain Resorts is the destination ski area, the Delta Center is the home of the NBA Utah Jazz. But there are three facilities that were truly built exclusively for the Olympic Winter Games. That’s here at the Utah Olympic Park. The Olympic Oval which was the side of the long track speed skating competition and then Soldier Hollow which hosted the cross country skiing and the biathlon events. Now today, all three of those were really legacy facilities that are open to the public and have a variety of programming that is available to adults and kids so that they can come to the venues and have a unique Olympic experience. At the Utah Olympic Oval we really handle all the different ice sports. So there is the 400-meter oval and then there are two inter-national sized ice sheets in side of that facility, into the five-acre facility that’s really, really remarkable. We actually put an indoor soccer field down over one of the ice sheets so we can do indoor soccer, and then we have a running track, the largest indoor running track in the State of Utah that’s outside of the oval. So sometimes you go over there and it is a truly a three or even a four-ring circus with joggers, speed skaters, hockey players and soccer players, all using the facility at the same time. Soldier Hollow which has the Olympic Cross-Country Skiing Trail System, 31 kilometers—that’s open to the public if you want some really challenging cross-country terrain, we’re going to actually add in some easier or gentler trails after the Olympics for first timers so that they can try cross-country skiing as well. Soldier Hollow also invites people come out and go tubing, these are the longest sliding lanes in the State of Utah about a thousand feet long, and you can get a pretty good speed up and it’s just fun, affordable, family opportunity for them to come out and go tubing at Soldier Hollow. Howard Peterson: Soldier Hollow night have been a temporary facility, and of course when Olympics—they come and go often with experience or left or nothing at all. And Soldier Hollow is not only a legacy, but we—in our first year had 62,000 coming here to do something—ski, or mountain bike, attend their sheepdog championships. This year we’re on a phase for over 100,000 and of course huge amount of those are little kids, out skiing and while we don’t look at each trial and say, “you’re a future Olympian and push them towards that.” We know on their own, we have a lot of young kids who would be on future Olympic team, another big part of the legacy, little talents and all around us will have future Olympians in every neighbour, it will be maybe your baby sitter or their kids who will be part of the Olympics and that’s really special. Utah is a pretty special place. And I think—there’s snow that comes in such great depth and it’s so light and fluffy but we’re still a pioneer area. I think that was part of the most pleasurable part of the Olympics, that people enjoy the western experience. So we’re out there a little bit in the west, still a little rough and within that atmosphere, to be able to go and ski and enjoy our snow. We have aggressing a little bit, we have six moose up above on one of our trails today, and I guess that’s just part of that western feel and maybe the snow is just the magic that surrounds that. Frank Zang: We don’t want to be strictly something that where people come up here and say—they just see what was left of the 2002 Games. We want it to be a participatory experience. So at the Utah Park we offer public bobsled rides where you can go 80 miles per hour, four Gs of force, the equivalent of 40-storey drop in less than a minute. It is the real deal, it is much more than your average roller coaster ride. [Demonstration] Betsey Barker: I felt like I was taken off. It’s crazy. My insides are like all— Kimberly Demarco: My insides were okay, but my head, is where you feel the big G force is, I mean literally you can’t move your head, you can’t move anything. You just have to go with the bobsled. It was very fun, I’ll do it again right now, if they would let me. Betsey Barker: Right Female: You know, to tell you the G force is you’re going to sink down and not moving enough and maybe we’re like kittens. I guess, only they can warn you as much as they want but you wouldn’t know until you actually feel it like. [Demonstration] Frank Zang: Another thing that we do here is that we have introductory camps and these are usually half-day sessions with the general public. And in the winter time we hold them in Luge and skeleton and ski jumping and what we called slope style in our training park. And people did come and actually try these sports. We have coaching equipment and we’ll get you started maybe a little further down in the track and you will start to the very top, and we’ll start you off in some of the smaller ski jump, but you’ll get a chance within this three or four-hour camp to try one of these sports. Gregor Linsig: It’s just a beginner class, they’ve never really ski jump, they’ve never done anything like this before, and not many place in the world offer a program like this for beginners to learn that anyone can try. You don’t really need any ski skills or anything. We’ll just jumpstart on tiny little jumps and work their way up and just builds them confidence and by the time our session is over they’re probably be going about 40 feet—sound pretty cool. They’re not scared and then some have problems with them, then they have some problems. They should be scared or a little nervous. Male: It’s a little scary if you were jumping with five and six-year olds—as you can see, that’s as far as I want to go. We’re going about 10 to 50 meters but it literally—it feels like you’re flying. [Demonstration] Female: I would say am an adventurous spirit. I ride horses. I feel more comfortable on horses and I do in skis but we’ll see, I was going to play this—was it 20-meters or a 20-feet one? So we’ll see how that goes. [Demonstration] Frank Zang: You actually have six jumps here at the Utah Olympic Park—K10, K20, K40, K65 and the big Olympic hills, the K90 and the K120. And the reason that we have so many different jumps is obviously we want people to be able to try the sport and for the young athletes to develop, and move their way up to the Olympic hills. So the smaller jumps are a great way for people who take an introductory course and try these sports for the first time and then if they get better and better and get some coaching and develop their skills, hopefully they’ll have a chance to make a national team and go off the big jumps. For tourists, you can come here. We do have the outings and ski museums which chronicles the history of skiing in the State of Utah and all the different disciplines, the cross-country, the ski jumping, to alpines, to free-style. We also have some exhibits from the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, so it’s sort of a trip down on the memory lane as you get a chance to see some of the memorabilia from the game.