ORGANIZATION MAN

And now the Olympic stage shifts away from Sydney toward Salt Lake City and the 2002 Winter Games. America, meet Mitt Romney. Practical and plain-spoken, he may yet rescue what not so long ago seemed an unsalvageable wreck.

Romney was drafted to take over the Salt Lake Organizing Committee in February 1999, at the height of the worst corruption scandal in Olympic history--the revelations that Salt Lake had won the 2002 Games by wooing IOC members and their relatives with more than $1 million in cash, gifts and favors.

Sponsors? Not much interested. Budget? Shot to hell. Morale? Low. Optimism? Not much.

In 20 short months, Romney--a venture capitalist and corporate turnaround artist--has cut costs, aggressively wooed new sponsors and sharply closed SLOC’s budget gap.

A skilled politician, he has relentlessly pursued essential government funding for transit projects and for Games security. He also has made a point of cultivating constructive working relationships with anyone interested within the International Olympic Committee.

Yet he doesn’t hang out in hotel bars with the IOC rank and file, and he has not hesitated to make it abundantly clear his view that sunshine is the best disinfectant for scandal, even when that has caused discomfort to some within the IOC.

Perhaps most important, Romney has restored a sense in Salt Lake City that the Games should be--will be--good fun. Maybe even a party. Or at least as much of a party as is possible in Utah.

Last Tuesday, 10,000 people jammed a square in downtown Salt Lake City for a party counting down the 500 days till the Games; they begin on Feb. 8, 2002. Romney appeared via TV from Sydney, and afterward laughed in delight.

“If I can keep from doing something stupid to get us in a deep hole,” he said, “we’ll be fine.”

No matter what Romney does, it’s likely the Salt Lake Games will forever be linked to the scandal, which prompted the resignations or expulsions of 10 IOC members and led the IOC late last year to enact a wide-ranging 50-point reform plan.

In July, a federal grand jury indicted the two top officials of the Salt Lake bid, Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, on 15 felony counts, including fraud. It’s not clear when a trial will begin; it is possible a trial may yet be ongoing when the Games begin.

“It is what it is,” Romney said.

In the meantime, however, he has fought through the scandal by hewing to three basic precepts, which he says “ought to be part of the Olympic culture”:

1. No one is above the rules.

2. It’s not an excuse to say, “Everybody does it.”

3. It’s inexcusable to hide the truth.

“You can withstand a scandal if you follow those rules,” Romney said. “The time a scandal becomes life-threatening is when you cheat on those rules.

“It’s all a matter of leadership,” he said.

What SLOC got in Romney is that rare individual who is familiar with and comfortable in many worlds simultaneously--in particular, in business, politics and government.

He’s also a man who puts his money where his mouth is. He has said he will not accept a salary at SLOC unless and until the money is on hand at the end of the Games--all told, about $1 million. Meantime, as part of a program he created to encourage prominent Utah families to give to SLOC, Romney and his family have already donated $1 million.

When Romney was a kid, his dad, George, was governor of Michigan. The elder Romney later ran unsuccessfully for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination as a favorite of moderates, and served in Richard Nixon’s cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Romney likes to tell stories about his dad’s tenure in the Nixon cabinet, in particular one about an aide who had been warned about approving housing grants in certain low-income areas. As the son tells the story, the aide went to the elder Romney to ask what to do and was informed: “Do the right thing and I’ll take the political heat.”

The son went to college at Brigham Young. He earned law and business degrees from Harvard.

He then became wealthy. He was a management consultant at Bain & Co. and, in 1984, when Bain spun off a venture capital subsidiary, Bain Capital, Romney was put in charge. Bain has since acquired or started more than 120 companies, among them Staples, Domino’s Pizza, Brookstone, Totes and the Sealy Corp.

In 1990, he returned to Bain & Co. to lead its turnaround. It now has 25 offices worldwide and more than 2,000 employees.

Four years later, Romney ran for a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts. A Republican, he almost beat the incumbent, Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Romney and his wife, Ann, have five children.

When he took over at SLOC, on Feb. 11, 1999, SLOC’s board chairman, Robert H. Garff, said local officials were “honored and grateful” Romney was coming aboard.

The scandal had erupted in late November 1998.

Romney’s first task was to trim SLOC’s budget. He cut about $200 million. SLOC’s break-even point is now $1.319 billion.

An example of the cuts: $12 million in decorations. Romney stresses a belief that none of the trims will affect what he calls “the field of play.”

To compare, the budget for the Sydney Games is about $1.5 billion. The 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta cost local organizers about $1.7 billion.

Unlike in other countries--in Australia, for instance--the state and federal government in the United States do not contribute directly to the operating budget.

Thus the onus is on the local organizing committee to line up sponsors. In a twist that may at first seem to defy common sense, the reality of a Winter Games in the United States is that it takes even more sponsor money than it does to stage a Summer Games.

The practical impact of the scandal is that, as Romney dryly puts it, it made identifying and convincing potential sponsors to sign up “a particular challenge.”

To meet Romney’s $1.319-million budget total, for instance, SLOC must raise $518 million from sponsors. Atlanta organizers raised $426 million.

Why so much more?

The Summer Games traditionally are worth more to broadcasters, and TV rights are typically the largest source of any organizing committee’s revenues. NBC, for instance, paid $705 million for the rights to the Sydney Games and $545 million for Salt Lake.

The other major difference is tickets.

There are considerably more events at the Summer Games than the Winter Olympics, and Summer Games events are often held in huge stadiums. Sydney’s Olympic Stadium has been packed to its 110,000-seat capacity this week for track and field. The marquee sport in Salt Lake, figure skating, will be held at the Delta Center. For the Olympics, it will seat about 14,000.

“It’ll be magic,” Romney says of the Salt Lake Games. “Inspiring. But it’s much smaller.”

Atlanta took in $425 million in tickets. Salt Lake’s budget estimate for tickets is $180 million.

The bottom line: “When I came on, we were $375 million behind in sponsor money,” Romney said. He and Mark Lewis--SLOC’s new vice president for marketing--have since added 28 new sponsors. They still need $76 million to make $518 million, but Romney said, “At this stage we’re on sound footing financially.”

The “remaining area of most concern,” he said, is government funding.

A General Accounting Office report fixes the total government outlay for the 2002 Games at about $1.4 billion. That sum is separate from SLOC’s $1.319-billion budget.

Most of the government money, $1 billion, is for the reconstruction of Interstate 15, which cuts through Salt Lake City and is a project that local officials say was needed regardless of the Games.

The rest is split between transportation funds, $245 million, and security, postal, customs and other operations, about $200 million.

Roughly $77 million in transit funds from the government’s fiscal 2001 budget remains to be appropriated, Romney said. If it doesn’t come through, he said, “We’re in deep trouble.”

If the money does come through, if there’s snow in February 2002 on the Wasatch range, if everything works out--enjoy the moment. These Games could be the last on American soil for a very, very long time. The scandal still resonates among significant factions within the IOC, who blame Salt Lake City--and, by extension, the United States--for the trouble.

More embarrassing revelations involving the IOC are likely to emerge as the Welch and Johnson cases near trial. On Saturday, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that in June 1998--before Romney took over--SLOC officials went to lengths to arrange the purchase of Viagra for two visiting IOC members. The newspaper did not name the two delegates.

“I’ve come into a tough setting,” Romney said a few days ago in an interview.

“But the idea here is to make the Games successful for our athletes, for the United States and for the Olympic movement. That’s the focus.”

SALT LAKE CITY

Salt Lake City was settled by Mormons seeking a place to practice their religion without persecution. The pioneers arrived in 1847 with Brigham Young, their leader. The area was initially named Deseret. Within three years, they had founded the University of Deseret, now the University of Utah.

Though the area was barren and had a plague of crickets and was set upon by many on their way to the California gold fields, the Salt Lake City area blossomed under Young’s leadership.

The Great Salt Lake, 17 miles west of the city, is a huge salt-water lake. It is 48 miles by 90 miles, only about 45 feet deep and from 5 to 15% salt, which is two times saltier than the ocean.

People can float like a cork in its water. The lake is part of an ancient lake known as Lake Bonneville. The salt flats in Nevada were once part of this immense lake.

POPULATION

The population of Salt Lake City, the largest city in Utah:

1990 159,936

1996 172,178

1999 174,348

CLIMATE

Salt Lake City has four seasons. The surrounding mountains modify the climate, low moisture helps the region with low humidity and in the winter, dry, powdery snow for the “greatest snow on earth.”

There are clear skies 34% of the time; partly cloudy skies 28%; and cloudy skies 38%.

Salt Lake City average annual rainfall is 15.7 inches. The average annual snowfall is 64 inches.

The average temperature is 51.8 degrees. The average winter temperature is 36.4 degrees. The average summer temperature is 92.2 degrees.

DID YOU KNOW

* Of the 50 states, Utah has one of the largest concentrations of computer software firms; one of the four larger concentrations of biomedical firms; the youngest population; one of the highest birth rates; the second lowest death rate; the healthiest population; the highest literacy rate; the highest percentage of high school graduates; and the highest number of people with a college education.

* Salt Lake’s elevation is 4,330 feet above sea level at the valley floor and 5,200 feet in the foothills.

* Nine major ski resorts, three cross-country ski areas and the nation’s only recreational ski jumping complex are less than an hour’s drive from downtown.

* Salt Lake International Airport is closer to the heart of the city it serves than nearly any other U.S. airport.

* As the “Crossroads of the West,” at least half of America’s population is located within a 2 1/2-hour flight from Salt Lake City.

* Salt Lake City is the largest city to host Winter Olympic Games.

* In 1995, Life Magazine ranked Salt Lake as one of the top vacation getaways.