PARIS — A top International Olympic Committee official doesn’t seem too worried about Utah losing the just-awarded 2034 Winter Games, despite a new termination clause added at the last minute to the state’s host contract.
The new language added to the hefty contract spells out that the IOC can take back the Olympics if “the supreme authority of the World Anti Doping Agency in the fight against doping is not fully respected or if the application of the World Anti-Doping Code is hindered or undermined.”
The change comes as international sports officials are seeking to stop a U.S. government investigation into allegations that a group of Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance, but were allowed to compete in 2021. Earlier this month, a Switzerland-based swimming official was subpoenaed to testify about the situation by U.S. authorities.
“It gives us confidence that this dialogue will be fruitful,” IOC Olympic Games Executive Director Christophe Dubi told the Deseret News, praising the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee for siding with the international sports community.
“You saw the attitude of Salt Lake City. We really like it,” Dubi said. “Because this is the way to dialogue and what was expressed was support for the position of WADA.” He said both the now organizing committee’s president and CEO, Fraser Bullock, and USOPC Chair Gene Sykes, now also an IOC member, “were extremely clear about that” and endorsed the contract addition.
“In the end, the fight against doping is so important and dear to all of us that it has to work seamlessly everywhere,” Dubi said.
Exactly what the leaders of the 2034 Games and the USOPC are expected to accomplish is not clear.
“What you hope for is a healthy dialogue,” Dubi said. “You can qualify healthy the way you want, but at least it’s a dialogue towards a solution, or a better solution and a better situation. So as far as I am concerned, and I have seen them several times afterwards, everybody is comfortable.”
But what about the threat that Utah’s contract to host the 2034 Winter Games could be terminated if the U.S. government doesn’t recognize the Canadian-based WADA as having the final say on doping matters?
“We are at the start of a 10-year journey, which sees first the Games going to Los Angeles (already named the host of the 2028 Summer Games) and then to Salt Lake City,” Dubi said, noting there was “overwhelming support for the Games in Salt Lake” at Wednesday’s IOC session.
There, IOC members voted 83-6 to give the 2034 Games to Utah, but not before several took the time to air their frustrations with the U.S. But overall, Dubi said, they made it clear they want to see the Olympics return to Utah. Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Games.
“The No. 1 element that was mentioned is how happy the sports community, the IOC, and all the stakeholders … are to go back to Salt Lake City,” he said. “This is an ideal setting but this is also an ideal community. This is an ideal complex for the Games to take place. I stick to that.”
He pointed out there were already reasons the IOC could tear up its contract with Utah. Those include if the U.S. were to be between now and 2034 “in a state of war, civil disorder, boycott, embargo, decreed by the international community in a situation or officially recognized as one of belligerence.”
Other scenarios in the contract are serious threats to the security, health or safety of participants, such as a pandemic or natural disaster. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a yearlong delay of the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who signed the contract electronically on behalf of the state even before Wednesday’s vote, told reporters he didn’t really have a choice.
“We have agreed if the United States does not support or violates the World Anti Doping (Agency’s) rules that they can withdraw the Games from us and from the United States,” the governor said Wednesday. “That was the only way that we could guarantee that we could get the Games.”
Cox said that means “we’re going to be working very hard obviously with U.S. officials to make sure that doesn’t happen, that we’re able to keep the Games.” But he also added, “I would tell Utahns that I’m not worried about that. I’m 100% convinced that we can work through this.”