Salt Lake City, where a brazen bribery scandal ahead of the 2002 Winter Olympics helped change the way host cities are chosen, was given a second chance on Wednesday when it was named as the site of the 2034 Winter Games.
But its victory came only after a dramatic decision to revise the host city contract that Salt Lake City and Utah officials had signed. That change would allow the I.O.C. to pull the Games if any effort was made to undermine the authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency, the global regulator of doping in sports.
The sudden adjustment came after several Olympic committee officials, while praising Salt Lake City’s bid before the vote in Paris, expressed anger at efforts by the U.S. authorities to investigate the actions of doping and swimming officials in the case of two dozen elite Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Those positive tests, revealed by a New York Times investigation this year, have raised questions about WADA’s ability and willingness to police doping in international sports. But it is the federal investigations into the case in the United States, which have already led to at least one subpoena for swimming’s top official, that have rattled top sports and doping officials.
Salt Lake City officials had already agreed to the changes and signed a revised hosting agreement, according to John Coates, the I.O.C.’s top legal official.
Mr. Coates said that the I.O.C. reserved the right to “terminate Olympic host city contracts in cases where the supreme authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency in the fight against doping is not fully respected or if the application of the world antidoping code is hindered or undermined.”
The announcement on the hosting rights — a foregone conclusion as Salt Lake City was the preferred and only candidate — was greeted with cheers in Utah, where a crowd had been invited to a downtown watch party for an announcement that finally came just after 4 a.m. local time.
Much has changed since Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Games, which are primarily remembered for corruption in the bidding process and scandal in the figure skating competition.
Two decades later, Salt Lake officials were able to convince the International Olympic Committee that they deserved another opportunity with a preliminary budget of about $4 billion. Two factors also paved the way to its victory: All of the permanent sports venues already exist from the 2002 Games, and there is widespread public support in Utah for a return.
Earlier on Wednesday, a French bid by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regions was provisionally chosen to host the 2030 Winter Games, provided it fulfilled certain conditions and requirements set by the I.O.C. Those Games will be centered on ski resorts in the French Alps and the southern city of Nice.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, offered thanks on behalf of the bid committee “for the trust you have placed in us with your vote,” and pledged the government’s support to clear any remaining financial and logistical hurdles. “We will be there,” he said, “and respect our commitments.”
Dismantled is the sordid Olympic bidding process, which predated Salt Lake City’s earlier bid, in which large numbers of I.O.C. delegates visited potential host cities, often with their hands out, and were granted with financial and other favors in what amounted to revolving vote-buying schemes that preceded each Winter and Summer Games.
The bidding process no longer includes long lines of I.O.C. members arriving in competing cities like Olympic trick-or-treaters. Instead, the I.O.C. holds regular discussions with interested cities as candidates are winnowed. And then a so-called Future Games Commission, comprising roughly a dozen members, visits the preferred city or region and makes a recommendation to the I.O.C. executive board.
Individual delegates still vote on the host city, but essentially only to affirm a recommendation by the executive board. Earlier decisions resulted in similarly arranged victories for the next three hosts of the Summer Games: Paris (2024), Los Angeles (2028) and Brisbane, Australia (2032).
Salt Lake City will have a decade to prepare for its Games, and officials have acknowledged that one of their main tasks will be to sustain public support. The continuing impact of climate change also will have to be taken into account.
Among the I.O.C.’s concerns in amending its bidding rules were sustainable sporting venues and a reduction in the number of cities required to spend millions of dollars on their bids, even if they had little or no chance of winning.
In recent years, cities and regions have become increasingly wary of even seeking to host the Winter Games, given the enormous cost of building venues like ski jumps and luge and bobsled tracks that offered little use beyond the Olympics. In that regard, Salt Lake City offered an inviting candidacy for 2034. It already has such a track, a speedskating oval and a ski jump from the 2002 Winter Games, as well as plenty of ski resorts and an N.B.A. arena that can be used again for indoor events like figure skating.
Corruption has not been eliminated from the Olympic bid process, however. As of December 2023, two years after the Summer Games were held in Tokyo in 2021, bid-rigging trials were still taking place in Japan involving companies that organize, promote and market sporting events. Officials from the companies have been charged with violating antimonopoly laws.
But there has rarely been an Olympic scandal as extensive as the one that emerged from Salt Lake City’s bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. Ten I.O.C. members eventually resigned or were expelled and another 10 received warnings for their willing acceptance of more than $1 million in cash payments, scholarships, free medical care, and gifts as diverse as doorknobs and free trips to the Super Bowl. The revelations remain one of the most embarrassing chapters in the history of the modern Games.
Once the 2002 Games began, they were overshadowed by a scandal in pairs figure skating that caused the 6.0 scoring system to be abolished in favor of a more complicated mathematical system that awarded points for each jump and spin.
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