Before 2002, cross-country skier Luke Bodensteiner, who competed at the University of Utah and in the 1992 and 1994 Winter Games, remembers, “Utah had a strong sports community,” but, he says, “I wouldn’t say that, aside from Alpine skiing, that Utah was necessarily a ski town,” and sports like freestyle, cross-country and ski jumping didn’t meaningfully exist here before 2002.
Bodensteiner worked for U.S. Ski and Nordic Team at the time, while they were pushing for the inclusion of new sports and events, like slopestyle and big air, that were oftentimes pioneered in the U.S., and they knew Americans could field good teams in those areas. It was an evolution of winter sports that started before 2002 but took off around the Salt Lake City Winter Games. “That was sort of the first big expansion in my mind, when places like the Utah Olympic Park were developed,” he says. “Just having those facilities provided the opportunity for people to participate, and that stimulated the growth of clubs around those sports.”
Now, Bodensteiner works as the Sport Development Director and General Manager of Soldier Hollow with the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation (UOLF), which maintains Olympic facilities, including Soldier Hollow Nordic Center, the Utah Olympic Oval and Utah Olympic Park. “The [2002] organizing committee was pretty visionary in their desire to make sure that there was a lasting legacy after the Games,” he says, which was something that set Salt Lake City apart from many other Olympic host cities. “Before that, other Olympics, obviously, were really focused on making the Games happen, but there wasn’t a lot of forethought in terms of what’s going to happen to the facilities after.” The financially successful games left behind a legacy fund that kept Utah’s Olympic venues in “world-class” shape, where Olympians would train and compete.
Even then, the Olympic venues’ full potential had not yet been realized. “After the games, people were coming in and seeing the building [the Oval] but then leaving because there weren’t any real programs that were being run here,” says Derek Parra, a U.S. speedskater who won gold in the 2002 Games. He started doing youth outreach at UOLF after the Vancouver Games and is now the Director of Sports at the Utah Olympic Oval, but Parra gives credit for envisioning the venues as a place for youth sports to Colin Hilton, the president of the foundation. They hired coaches and created programs to engage kids and “teach them about life through sport” in hopes of creating long-term athletes. “If you look at every other Olympic venue in the world, there aren’t many that are doing this,” Parra says. “I think we are the best example of that.”
At Soldier Hollow alone, Bodensteiner says they have some 500 kids participating in their programs. With all of the UOLF programs combined, nearly 3,000 kids participate. “The gravitational pull of the Legacy foundation and its ability to bring clubs together under one roof has just really allowed that whole thing to explode,” says Bodensteiner. And it doesn’t hurt to have elite athletes, and former Olympians like Bodensteiner and Parra, running the programs.
“When you have experience as an athlete, you have a certain level of intuition about what the next generation of athletes needs or what the programs need,” says Bodensteiner.
“It was easy for me to kind of pay that forward,” says Parra about his experience coaching. “I was bringing in kids who were kind of following my footsteps.”
Future Olympians
Utah boasts dozens of former Olympians and Olympic athletes who claim Utah as their home because multiple U.S. Olympic teams have headquarters and train here. We saw a class of athletes, inspired by watching the 2002 Winter Games, compete in Turin, Vancouver, Sochi and Pyeongchang. Now, we have begun to see more Olympians, too young to remember 2002, emerge from Utah with the support of Utah’s enduring Olympic legacy.
The Youth Sports Alliance (YSA) was founded as a result of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games and has become a way to inspire future Olympians. Its goal is getting as many kids as possible—from all different backgrounds—out, active and using the Olympic venues, without the typical barriers to entry (like lots and lots of disposable income).
“Our afterschool programs are unique because we provide transportation, proper gear and proper clothing so all kids can participate,” says Emily Fisher, Executive Director of the Youth Sports Alliance, but no one group is singled out. “We don’t run programs just for specific parts of our community. All the kids get on the same bus. They have the same experience, share the same snacks, and talk about wipeouts together,” she says.
Last year, more than 2,500 kids from 23 local schools participated in more than 150 after-school programs. YSA also supports seven local winter sports teams in the Wasatch Back. If the young athletes can’t afford team participation, they can apply for a YSA scholarship to pay for fees, camps and competitions.
The YSA has a reciprocal relationship with the Legacy foundation, using the Utah Olympic Park and Soldier Hollow for after-school programs. The UOLF provides the coaching staff and at the end of the program, Fisher says, “[The UOLF] can reach out and say, ‘Hey, you just tried four weeks of biathlon. If you’d like to join our club, come try out for one night for free.’”
From the ranks of the YSA, the young careers of multiple Olympians and Olympic hopefuls have emerged. In 2022, three after-school program alumni qualified for the Olympics.
Among them, 25-year-old Ashley Farquharson first rode a sled down an Olympic track as part of a YSA after-school program. She competed in luge at the 2022 Winter Games. Nordic combined skier 25-year-old Jared Shumate started in the YSA after-school program as well. He had the strongest finish of any American in the large hill event in the Beijing Winter Games. Speedskater Casey Dawson, 25, has set a world record and won a bronze medal in team pursuit at the 2022 Winter Games.
And YSA alumni certainly have high hopes for the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina, Italy. “We’ve had really great success with the Nordic jumping program,” says Fisher. Josie Johnson, 17, was an alpine skier in the after-school ski jumping program. Last year, she won a silver medal at the Youth Olympic Games.
The chance to “sample” activities, beyond Olympic dreams, is important, Fisher says. As a lifelong athlete and cross-country ski racer, she can speak personally to the difference it makes. “To be able to provide that for the community I’ve been in for 26 years, it’s definitely my dream job,” she says.
Bodensteiner adds, “It’s about offering people opportunities to engage in sports. The more people we can get involved, the more we are building up that culture in our communities.”
And those communities built around sport can become lifelines. Parra says, “Everything I learned in my life—the lessons that I learned through the people around me, the communities I was in, the sport that I was participating in, and all the failures and successes that I had, whether it’s budgeting, accountability, teamwork, treating people nice—all that came from my time in sports.”
Countdown to 2034
When the International Olympic Committee visited Utah in April, they met with the Youth Sports Alliance, sharing the impact they have had with local kids since 2002. “And they just—they love that,” says Fisher. With the 2034 Winter Games returning to Utah, she hopes to see the YSA model spread to more communities across Utah, beyond the Wasatch Back. “When I look ahead at the next nine years, I think about how many lives we can change,” she says.
Bodensteiner expects excitement about the Games will only grow the closer we get to 2034. “Now we can really kind of take that to the next level, modernize what we’re doing at these facilities.” At Soldier Hollow, for example, they hope to invest in more efficient snowmaking that will allow for a longer ski season.
Just as the 2002 Winter Games helped grow new skiing events, Parra sees an opportunity for growth in other sports here in Utah. “I don’t feel like we are in a skating state just yet.” In Milwaukee, where he learned to ice skate, at the rink “everybody comes with their own skates,” he says. Utahns pass down skis and snowboards but, “There isn’t that generational passing on of the skates or the love of skating…But we have nine more years until the Games.”
On Legacy
When Alma Richards competed in the 1912 Olympics, he was an oddity among the East Coast-bred, Ivy League members of the U.S. Olympic Team. Amateur sport competition was a game for the aristocracy. Richards’ Native American and Hawaiian teammates were also considered “exotic” by the press. The U.S. did not send a single woman to compete that year, even though women could participate. When Richards’ hopes for another Olympics dwindled, he turned his focus to the next generation, perhaps unknowingly establishing an Olympic tradition. Biographer Larry Gerlach observes, “As an athlete, he gained enduring recognition…[but] clearly, as an educator he made his most important and lasting contributions to his fellow humans.”
By 2002, 90 years later, the demographics of the Games had changed. Derek Parra became the first Mexican-American to win an Olympic gold medal, but, in Parra’s own words, he spent every coin he had to make the Olympic team. Former Olympians, like Parra, Bodensteiner and many others, turn their focus to the next generation and make these once restricted spaces—expensive club sports, elite competition, world-class venues—as accessible as possible.
If there is an Olympic legacy that Utah could carry into the best version of the 2034 Games, it would be the tradition of becoming more inclusive, more accessible, and leaving things better than we found them for the next generation.
Read more about Utah’s Olympic legacy here!
