Salt Lake, Sapporo head race to 2030 Olympics, and maybe '34

Fraser Bullock, who leads Salt Lake City's bid to return the Winter Olympics to Utah, sounds very confident about success.

“I believe we'll host a future Game(s). It's a question of when,” he said last week in a local television interview.

But will it be in 2030, the first opening on the IOC calendar? Or might the International Olympic Committee make a double award and also name the 2034 host? When it had two strong candidates 4 1/2 years ago for the Summer Games, the IOC selected Paris for the 2024 Olympics and Los Angeles for 2028.

The IOC isn't saying. An announcement is expected early next year, with media reports in Salt Lake City suggesting a decision in May 2023.

“I've obviously got my fingers crossed for 2030, but whenever we're asked to host them, we'll be ready,” Bullock told the Deseret News in Utah.

The Associated Press requested an interview with Bullock but was told he was talking only to local media. Bullock was the No. 2 to Mitt Romney when Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Games.

Under its revised but opaque bid process, the IOC appears to have four possible candidates. Three have held Winter Olympics before: Sapporo (1972), Salt Lake City (2002), and Vancouver (2010). There is also interest from Barcelona, which held the 1992 Summer Games and could propose a bid with regions in the Pyrenees.

An IOC “technical team” was in Salt Lake City last week inspecting venues, and is in Vancouver this week. Meanwhile, a similar visit to Spain is reported to have been delayed.

Sapporo is not known to have a technical visit lined up, but a Japanese bid would have to be among the favorites after officially spending $13.6 billion to organize the one-year delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics. At least 60% was public money and