What? Nagano cheated?
Shortly after the Salt Lake bid scandal broke, someone burned about 90 boxes of records in Nagano. Here in Utah, meanwhile, there were records of everything — as there should have been. After all, public funds were involved.
As this newspaper reported on Monday, a new report about the Nagano bid was released recently in Japan. Called the Nagano Prefecture Investigation Group Report, it draws attention to what it calls an "illegitimate and excessive level of hospitality" lavished by Nagano officials on members of the International Olympic Committee leading up to the bid.
That excess included more than a half-million dollars of souvenirs, far more than allowed under IOC rules at the time. It included $4.4 million in entertainment expenses and about $776,000 in unaccounted-for expenses just to lobby and promote the bid during the IOC meetings in 1991 at which the bid was awarded. All told, Nagano spent more than $24 million promoting itself for that bid, which was nearly five times what Salt Lake City's bid spent.
Many of the details are missing. Much of the report's information is useless now, except for historical purposes. And, as far as the 2002 Winter Olympics goes, the important thing is that the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, led by Mitt Romney, put on a successful and memorable event that captivated world attention for two weeks.
But history probably means something to the people who were under the cloud of a federal investigation for years before a judge wisely threw the case out the window. And it ought to mean something to the IOC, a group that still operates with little, if any, oversight and that may be subject to future corruption.
The report suggests some people in Japan may be liable for criminal charges. But, as the story in this paper notes, it is generating little interest over there, nearly eight years after the Nagano Olympics.
Utahns were right, of course, to keep meticulous records of its scandal. Nagano's box-burning party is a national shame. To bribe one's way toward an Olympic bid flies in the face of the Olympic spirit and makes a mockery of efforts to avoid cheating among athletes.
The important thing now is to learn from the past and make future Olympic bids clean.
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