| Salt Lake City |
 |
 |
| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
 |
| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
|
| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
|
| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
|
| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
|
| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
|
| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
|
| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
|
| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
|
|
|
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Very few regrets about Olympics
By Diane Urbani
Deseret News staff writer
With Utah's great experiment coming to a close tonight, leaders are having a contest: Who can use the best superlatives about the Olympics.
Only two officials, when pressed, are talking trash and trailers. Those are the only things that sullied the Winter Games' golden stretch in and around Salt Lake City.
Gov. Mike Leavitt said things ran beautifully, and "I can promise that if we do it again, we'll do it better."
Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson also sounds ready for another bid. "The people of this city now understand that you can have thousands celebrating peacefully together," he said. "The only thing I would have done differently is I would not have lost so many nights' sleep, worrying about all the things that could go wrong."
Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Mitt Romney couldn't come up with anything he would have changed.
"I have to be honest with you. The Games came off so well, there's nothing that comes to mind that we should have done differently," Romney said.
The Utah Transit Authority, mover of the Olympic masses, won't play the would've-should've game either. It would have been nice to run TRAX to opening and closing ceremonies at Rice-Eccles Stadium, said UTA spokesman Kris McBride.
But that was "a little bit out of our hands," since federal security forces formed a blockade around the stadium to protect visitors such as President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
As for the hordes who have taken to TRAX and buses during the rest of the Games, McBride said he hopes they will remember public transit long afterward.
"We're really pleased with how the public's responded," he said.
Only Rick Graham, city trash czar (more officially, Salt Lake director of Public Services), reluctantly acknowledged a single shortcoming. "One thing we underestimated was the concentration of crowds in the downtown area," he began. Since garbage cans were deemed a security risk and taken off the streets, "we had to use employees with hand-picking devices" and pushcarts.
"Those are hard to manipulate in the crowds." If tens of thousands of revelers converge on Main Street and South Temple again, Graham would look into other ways to sweep up after them.
Utah Olympic Public Safety Commander Robert Flowers said the only security-related trouble he saw was in the trailers where some police lived during the Games.
"I would like to have made better living conditions for some of our volunteer officers," he said. Those officers who stayed in Heber City faced freezing temperatures, frozen pipes and backed-up sewers when they arrived.
But the Olympic workers did Flowers proud. Only 1 percent of the 650 out-of-state volunteers left. In Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Games almost half of the volunteer officers left early.
Olympic host-city hopefuls, from Houston to Washington, D.C., have clustered in Salt Lake City this month, picking the brain of the mayor. Anderson's advice to them: "The best thing you can do is make (the planning process) as open as possible. Let people know everything you have in mind."
"If those things are undisclosed, you'll run into a lot of opposition."
The mayor saw such opposition last fall when, a few weeks before construction began, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee's plan to place lighted Olympic rings on a Wasatch hillside was disclosed. That project epitomized the divide between SLOC, which wanted a temporarily dazzling Games image, and many Salt Lake residents, who worried about the lasting impact on the foothills.
Anderson seemed to want the rings, and the Olympics, because they would shine bright lights on his city's attractive qualities.
"I think now that we've had the Olympic Games, people around the world can see all of the elements that make this a great place to live," he said.
Anderson acknowledged that the turnouts for the downtown festival around the City-County Building were too slim at times. The banners advertising it should have gone up sooner.
Crowds grew as word got out, Anderson said, adding with a smile that beverage booths at the festival put out a message he's long sought to spread: "You can even come here and have glass of wine or a hot buttered rum."
Contributing: Bob Bernick Jr., Derek Jensen, Leah L. Culler
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February 25, 2002
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