365 DAYS TO THE... Great Lake?

A year from today, the Winter Games open in Salt Lake City. Organizers are planning a daylong party today in and around the city with a host of government, Olympic and sports dignitaries. The focus will be on what Mitt Romney, president of the organizing committee, now ventures to say may be “great Games,” citing a sunny financial picture, hot ticket sales, world-class venues in and around the Wasatch Mountains and thousands of volunteers signed and ready to go.

Meantime, today’s docket at the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City includes the first major pretrial hearing in the case of The United States v. Tom Welch and Dave Johnson--the two men charged with fraud and other crimes in connection with the worst corruption scandal in 107 years of Olympic history.

“Bummer, huh?” Romney said of the coincidence.

Welch was no happier than Romney.

“Mitt was upset that our hearing was on his day,” Welch said. “How does he think we feel about it?”

The bid scandal--in which members of the International Olympic Committee or their relatives were showered with more than $1 million in cash, gifts, scholarships and other inducements--will forever be part of the lore of the Salt Lake City Games. Ten IOC members resigned or were expelled. The IOC passed a 50-point reform program.

After nearly two years of investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, Welch and Johnson were indicted last year on 15 separate counts. It remains unclear when the trial itself will begin; some close to the case have said it’s not clear it will be finished when the Games open next Feb. 8.

Until the case is concluded, the scandal is still very much in evidence in Salt Lake City--no matter how terrific the outlook for the Games. And, by every traditional measure, the 2002 Games--the fourth in the United States in the last 22 years, but the last for at least 10 years--appear to be rounding into great shape.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt called the scandal “this difficult chapter,” and said it “will certainly be part of the texture” of the Games. But, he said, he has reason to believe the scandal ultimately “will be a footnote.”

“I think the potential is, we will put on Games that will technically set a new standard,” Leavitt said. “In many respects, that is the most bitter irony of this whole thing.”

Salt Lake won the right to organize the 2002 Games in an IOC vote in 1995. In late 1998 the scandal erupted. Welch had resigned earlier for unrelated reasons; Johnson resigned in early 1999. They had been the leaders of the bid and had assumed the Nos. 1 and 2 roles in the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

Romney came on board a few weeks afterward. A venture capitalist, he once ran for senator from Massachusetts, a Republican going up against Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy. Romney lost.

If running as a Republican against a Kennedy in Massachusetts is an impossible chore, it was an almost equally daunting task that Romney faced when he took over SLOC.

The scandal had scared off potential sponsors. A competent accountant looking at the budgets would have trembled. Community interest in the Games in Salt Lake was low; in his first few weeks on the job, Romney said, it was not uncommon to encounter a deep sense of communal shame.

Because of the considerable influence of the Mormon church in Utah, Romney said, “This community aspires to the highest ethical standards of ethical conduct and to be characterized as as bad as the worst made people just nauseated.”

During those first few weeks of 1999, Romney said, “I was wondering, ‘Could we have Games? Would we have the financial ability to actually host the Olympics?’

By last February, after a relentless press to lure new sponsors, Romney had this assessment: “OK, we’re going to have Games. But are they going to be good ones?”

Now, after wooing another two dozen sponsors as well as Congress and just plain folks in Utah, Romney asks a very different question: “Dare we dream that we could have great Games?”

Financially, the Games are on track. SLOC’s budget is $1.319 billion. Romney says he still has $60 million to raise. That $1.319 billion, however, includes $136 million in “contingency” funds, meaning SLOC already has made its budget--though Romney never lets up on the issue, saying, “We need to spend a lot of that contingency.”

On the plus side of the ledger, ticket sales have been, in a word, phenomenal. The Nagano Winter Games, in Japan in 1998, registered $80 million in gross sales. Already, Salt Lake has taken in $160 million in net sales (accounting for sales tax plus a 5% royalty payable to the IOC, in all about 10% of the gross).

The vast majority of the seats were sold on the Internet, a practice that has caught the IOC’s interest. About 58% of the tickets sold went in one of 77 four-day packages to the Games, another innovation.

More seats--in many cases, premium tickets to gold-medal events, what Romney calls “the Jack Nicholson seats”--remain to be sold, for as much as SLOC can get for them.

About 40% of the ticket orders already in have come from Utah, Romney said. The state’s population is just over 2 million and, back when the situation looked grim, SLOC officials made a big point of guaranteeing that 20% of seats would be made available to Utah residents. So at 40%, Romney said, “It blows the doors off. It was totally unexpected.”

More than 47,000 people have already signed up as volunteers. That’s the same number of volunteers who served last September in Sydney. By next February, SLOC officials expect the volunteer list to near 60,000.

Virtually all the venues are ready to go. As always with the Winter Olympics, there is worry over snow and the transportation. The logistics are even more complicated with the Winter Games than for the Summer Olympics, for the obvious reason that some venues tend to be in the mountains.

“But you don’t have great Games unless you do it,” Romney said.

There it is--the challenge that now occupies Romney’s imagination. Lately, he has been envisioning an enormous “Olympic square” that would take up about nine city blocks in downtown Salt Lake, a gathering place that would include the Olympic medal stand and feature what he called “A-list” entertainment and a fireworks extravaganza every night.

Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson said he is committed to “community building,” and Romney enthuses, “The city is behind us if we can write the check.” Which SLOC can’t do just yet. Then again, there’s a year to go.

“There have been great Games,” Romney muses. “Sydney’s were great Games. Lillehammer’s [in 1994] were great Games. Could Salt Lake be the host of great Games?

“That’s very much an open question. It is our aspiration and some would say that’s the hubris of Icarus--that we’re flying too close to the sun with our wax wings. They say, ‘Don’t dream that, Salt Lake. Just getting out of a hole is accomplishment enough.’

“But,” Romney said, “this is what we are talking about. Are there things we can do that will keep the unusual glow of Sydney alive?”

*

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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