Sen. Curtis Meets Park City Mayor to Discuss 2034 Winter Olympics Preparations

U.S. Sen. John Curtis sat down with Park City Mayor Ryan Dickey to discuss what it will take to pull off the 2034 Winter Olympics, offering guidance on coordination, funding, and infrastructure needs as the Games inch closer on the calendar. Curtis left little doubt about his confidence in Utah's readiness.

"There's zero question in my mind that we will pull off the best Olympics in the history of the world," Curtis said.

The meeting comes as Park City and Summit County deepen preparations that began in earnest after Utah was awarded the 2034 Games in July 2024. Both entities have been working collaboratively since then, with an eye toward building the kind of lasting legacy that the 2002 Salt Lake City Games produced, including youth sports programs still developing Olympic-caliber athletes today.

To accelerate that planning, Park City and Summit County sent delegations to northern Italy to observe the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics firsthand. Park City sent Mayor Dickey, acting City Manager Jodi Emery, and councilmember Tana Toly. Summit County dispatched County Manager Shayne Scott and councilmember Tonja Hanson. Both groups participated in an official Olympic observer program designed to help future host communities learn from current ones.

Scott and Emery presented key takeaways to both councils on a Friday morning, and the lessons were blunt. Scott described standing inside a uniform and accreditation building in Cortina when he noticed a drip. What followed stuck with him as a cautionary tale about municipal capacity under Olympic pressure.

"The IOC [International Olympic Committee] had called these local municipalities and said, 'Can we get this drip fixed?' And they're like, 'We can't fix that drip. We're completely overwhelmed by these Games. It'll be two weeks,'" Scott recounted.

The episode sharpened his thinking about how Park City and Summit County must maintain basic municipal functions, including snow removal, even while managing the extraordinary demands of hosting the world's largest winter sporting event. A second anecdote reinforced the point: Scott and other attendees had to walk through hundreds of yards of mud to reach the luge venue in Cortina. By the following day, wood chips lined the path. The rapid, low-tech fix illustrated the kind of adaptability local officials will need to cultivate before 2034.

Emery framed Utah's challenge in geographic terms. In Italy, the Milan Cortina venues were scattered across a vast region, with some separated by hundreds of miles. Utah's layout is nothing like that.

"In contrast, Utah's compact footprint is our greatest advantage, but I would say it also is our greatest management challenge," Emery said. "Because our venues are so close, we are going to have a lot of pressure on Park City and Summit County's infrastructure."

That concentrated pressure, not dispersal, is the defining operational reality Park City and Summit County must plan around as 2034 approaches.