Hometown crowd: Utah still in the Games through its 12 athletes

It used to be, you couldn't go to a Winter Olympics without running into someone from Utah who was there trying to get the next one.

Ever since the Deseret Morning News started sending me to cover the Winter Games, beginning with Calgary in 1988, there were always bidders on the scene whose intention was, as one of the early ones, Jack Turner, observed, "to bring Utah into the Olympics kicking and screaming."

As most of the world and the U.S. Department of Justice knows, the bidders succeeded. The Olympic Winter Games of 2002 were held in the city of Salt Lake City to resounding worldwide acclaim and local astonishment.

Now, four years later, as the movement moves on for its Salt Lake encore in Torino, Italy, the scene has changed dramatically.

As I head off to cover the 20th version of the Winter Games, I find myself surrounded by another breed of Utahn entirely: athletes.

You won't be able to swing a large pizza in the Italian Alps the next 17 days without hitting a Utahn.

No less than a dozen homegrown athletes are 2006 Olympians — with "homegrown" defined as anyone who was either born in Utah or moved to the state at an early age to live, as opposed specifically to train.

Add in all those athletes who have moved here, at least part time, to train on our Olympic-caliber facilities, including large segments of the long-track speedskating, alpine, nordic and freestyle skiing teams — along with all sorts of bobsledders, lugers and skeletoners — and the number climbs to near 60.

All those Olympic boosters who predicted "If you build it, they will come," can now add, "If you build it, they will go."

In droves.

It is shaping up as the enduring legacy of 2002: You can take the Olympics out of Utah, but you can't take Utah out of the Olympics.

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The inclusion of 12 bona fide Utah athletes competing in one Olympics takes on added significance when the perspective of history is added.

According to research by longtime Deseret Morning News ski editor Ray Grass (who can remember when metal skis were invented), in the 19 Olympics held before this one, the number of Utahns who participated was a total of 14. And that's counting three of the Torino athletes who were also on the U.S. team four years ago in Salt Lake City.