Shades of the Wild West. A dozen mounted Utah Highway Patrol (UHP) troopers will mingle in the downtown Salt Lake City crowds during the 2002 Salt Lake Games. The horse patrol will be similar to those deployed in larger metropolitan cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Horses were last used by Salt Lake City police in the 1920’s, by officers whose job it was to shield the city’s lawns and gardens from migrating sheep in the summer and winter. Training for the Olympic horse patrol will begin next month and will include lessons by experts from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the New York City Police Department. Nearly 40 UHP officers — who each already own horses and equipment such as trailers — have volunteered for the detail. The number will be whittled down to a dozen, based not on the officers’ skills, but on the ability of their horses to adapt to large Olympic crowds.
People attending Olympic events in Salt Lake City will face an average wait in line of five to 15 minutes before they can pass through security stations at venue entrances. New technology pinpointing items that set off a magnetometer’s alarm will “facilitate the flow” and keep crowds from experiencing lengthy delays getting into an event. An unspecified number of “pinpoint magnetometers” will be scattered among dozens of walk-through metal detectors guarding 10 competition venues for the 2002 Winter Games and non-competition areas, such as the fenced-off Olympic celebration zone that includes the Salt Palace, Delta Center and medals plaza in downtown Salt Lake City. While new-generaton magnetometers supplied by Olympic sponsor Sensormatic will speed the pass-through process, ticket holders still will be urged to reach veneus early to minimize delays. More detailed venue-travel plans will be unveiled in the fall.
A seminor sponsored by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC), attracted several hundred hotel-industry representatives to the Salt Palace Convetion Center in downtown Salt Lake City. SLOC has reserved about two-thirds of the Salt Lake area’s 33,000 hotel rooms for the Games and many hotels outside the Salt Lake Valley are booked for the Olympics as well. Problems such as jammed phone lines and language difficulties were discussed and the need for hotels to check all aspects of their security systems, including making sure doors and delivery docks are closely monitored and that alarm systems work. Managers were urged to provide badges identifying staff workers during the Games. And hotels were told to start laying in supplies now, including everything from hangers to toiletry items. Although the Olympics will last for 17 days, the hotels were told to expect their busiest days to occur before and after the Games — the days guests check in and check out. Also hotel representatives were advised to survey their employees for language fluency, to be aware of cultural differences and to be prepared to help guests in a variety of situations, such as when passports and luggage are lost.
More about hotels. Although the Athens Summer Games are not until 2004, a senior member of the Athens organizing committee said more hotels must be built urgently. Spyros Capralos said there was a shortage of 4,650 top quality hotel rooms and 4,000 two-star rooms. ATHOC has already signed agreements with most of the existing hotels, totalling about 11,350 rooms in the area in and around the capital, equivalent to 80 per cent of Athens’ total capacity in those categories. ATHOC has announced that Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC’s coordinating comission, will pay a surprise visit to Ahens to check on progress on key issues that he was unhappy with during his last visit in May, including accommodation for spectators. The Greek authorities and ATHOC are facing resistance from hotel owners, who oppose any major expansion in hotel capacity, similar to that undertaken for last year’s Olympics in Sydney, because they have trouble filling hotels now. They oppose the construction of new hotels hear the Olympic stadium despite more favourable regulations, and have indicated that they might withdraw from contracts already signed with the organizers. Up to 11,000 journalists and 2,000 officials will be put in separate facilities, to avoid placing a strain on hotel space.
Is it true? The Washington Times reports that taxpayers in Sydney lost $110 million (AUS.) on the Olympics and “some of them lost (their) businesses, as they bought into the hype about streets paved with gold”. Those businessmen expanded their businesses in an anticipation of an economic windfall. More people left Sydney during the Olympics than came there, said the report.
Tom Welch, head of Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2002 Olympic Games, has agreed to grant an exclusive interview to the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes”, says a Salt Lake Tribune report. Welch said producers have been pursuing him for a year and a half, and against the advice of his attorney, Welch finally agreed. It will be hist first in-depth interview since the Salt Lake City scandal broke two years ago. A broadcast date has not yet been set.
Olympic sponsor Jet Set Sports, has asked a federal magistrate to quash subpoenas that could reveal its most confidential dealings with the world’s Olympic organizations. Defence lawyers for Salt Lake bid head Tom Welch and his deputy Dave Johnson have demanded 15 years of corporate and bank records. They’re looking for information on any cash or perks Jet Set has given to 159 members or ex-members of the International Olympic Committee, among other Olympic officials. The U.S. Justice Department’s most explosive Olympic allegation is that the two defendants pocketed $130,000 in cash-stuffed envelopes handed off by Jet Set’s owner and a courier at airports and hotels from Lillehammer, Norway to Salt Lake City. The bid leaders maintain they spent every penny of the money on Salt Lake’s Olympic effort, not to enrich themselves, and their lawyers say the government can’t prove otherwise. The cash wasn’t recorded on bid-committee books, deposited in bank accounts or shown on tax filings. Jet Set says it’s not certain what documents, such as restaurant receipts, the defence really wants, but that it would be hard-pressed to round them up and probably doesn’t have many of them.
And finally, defence lawyers in the Salt Lake bribery case have tried to argue that nothing prevents U.S. bid cities from paying IOC members for their votes. The lawyers filed notice that they plan to pursue this novel theory at the trial of Salt Lake’s bid leaders. They’ve even hired an expert, Swiss legal authority Wolfgang Wigand, to testify about the laws governing the Swiss-based IOC. Under Swiss law, the lawyers said IOC members owe no financial obligation to their organization, so they could take bribes without violating Utah’s anti-bribery law. That law applies to employees, agents and fiduciaries of companies or organizations, and defence lawyers contend IOC members fit none of those definitions. But U.S. Magistrate Ronald Boyce, an authority on international law at the Univesity of Utah, ruled recently that Swiss law has no legal or factual relevance to the Olympic case.
