IFS Salt Lake City, UT - 2/5/2022 - 20th Anniversary of the 2002 Winter Olympics in SLC

canon07 · February 2022

After visiting every university campus in Utah, we decided to continue our tour of the state by visiting the locations of prominent Utah events each month.

This month we decided to celebrate a historic event and mark the 20th anniversary of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, by hosting a virtual First Saturday in Salt Lake City.

We had a great time socializing on Telegram and enjoyed chatting with folks from around the world in the true spirit of the Olympic Games.

A few folks even shared some picks of their SLC Olympic Games swag (remember those cool hats Team USA wore?) in addition to the required Ingress swag.

A little history on the 2002 games for you...

The 2002 Winter Olympics, officially the XIX Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Salt Lake 2002, was an international winter multi-sport event that was held from February 8 to 24, 2002 in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, United States.

Salt Lake City was elected as the host city in June 1995 at the 104th IOC Session. They were the eighth Olympics to be hosted by the United States, and the most recent to be held in the country (Los Angeles will host the future 2028 Summer Olympics). The 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics were both organized by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC), the first time that both events were organized by a single committee.[1]

The Games featured 2,399 athletes from 78 nations, participating in 78 events in 15 disciplines. Norway topped the medal table, with 13 gold and 25 medals overall, while Germany finished with the most total medals, winning 36 (with 12 of them gold). The hosting United States was third by gold medals and second by overall medals, with 10 and 34 respectively. Australia notably became the first Southern Hemisphere country to ever win gold medals at the Winter Olympics.

The Games finished with a budgetary surplus of US$40 million; the surplus was used to fund the formation of the Utah Athletic Foundation—which has continued to maintain the facilities built for these Olympics. The venues have continued to be used for national and international winter sports events after the Olympics, while the United States Olympic Committee has backed the possibility of Salt Lake City bidding for a future Winter Olympics.

Thanks again to all the organizers and we are happy to report a good time was had by all!