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SECOND IN A SERIES OF TWELVE 2002 showcase Games will give Utah rare opportunity to shine or stumble Last updated 11/09/1998, 12:01 a.m. MT By Lisa Riley Roche Deseret News staff writer       If Utahns want the world to see the place they've created in the state's deserts and mountains, there's probably no better opportunity than the 2002 Winter Games.       The Olympics are an international invitation to see what Utah has to offer, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sell the state to billions of people around the globe.       But with that opportunity comes the possibility of failing in front of a worldwide audience. Mistakes will only be magnified by the international scale of the $1.45 billion event.       The International Olympic Committee, which decides where the Games go, is confident that Utahns can pull it off — especially since Salt Lake is one of the largest metropolitan areas ever to host a Winter Games.       Still, no matter how hard the Salt Lake Organizing Committee or state leaders try, all of the publicity from the Games won't be positive. In fact, some of it is likely to be downright mean.       Just ask Atlanta, host of the 1996 Games.       The genteel, self-proclaimed capital of the South was ridiculed by reporters because of problems with technology, transportation, security and street vendors.       And even though Atlanta's Olympics were organized by a private, nonprofit committee, it was the city's image that came under attack.       That's a lesson Utahns should take to heart.       "Everyone is starting to understand we're in this together. It's not just the organizing committee that's going to be judged," said Dave Johnson, SLOC's senior vice president of Games.       If things go bad in 2002, Johnson said the city's reputation is on the line. "People are not going to say the organizing committee failed. They're going to say Salt Lake City failed," he said.       There will be plenty of people paying attention. Besides several billion television viewers, organizers estimate more than 133,000 participants every day of the Games.       That number includes 5,000 athletes and sports officials from as many as 80 countries, 3,500 Olympic dignataries, more than 10,000 print and broadcast journalists, 53,500 spectators, along with staff and sponsors.       Gov. Mike Leavitt has already called on Utahns to set aside whatever misgivings they may have about hosting the Olympics and work together to showcase the state in 2002.       "It's the committee's job to stage the Games," the governor has said. "Ours is to welcome the world."       He made those remarks to nearly a thousand Utahns gathered earlier this year for the first of a series of forums on the Olympics.       What Leavitt didn't say that day was that the thousands of journalists coming to Salt Lake City for the Olympics may not pay much attention to the welcome mat. Those who do are likely to be critical.       "One thing I'd advise you is to handle the sports reporters with kid gloves. They have fangs that will bite you," warns Sam Williams, head of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.       "They have a lot of spare time," Williams said. "You just really have to pay attention to them and treat them like royalty if you want them to write fairly."       Organizers are already thinking of ways to pamper the media. The Salt Palace is set to be transformed into a giant newsroom, and plans are under way to build special apartment-style housing nearby.       Williams and other Atlanta boosters were shaken up when their hometown was referred to as "bumfuzzled" — a word coined by a Southern humorist — or worse in stories that depicted the '96 Games as hopelessly disorganized.       Failure is the word Atlanta's leaders most feared hearing after the '96 Games, after years of trying to sell their city as a friendly place with its heart in the past but its mind in the next century.       "We were really worried about what the world thought of us," Williams said. So the Chamber of Commerce commissioned a Louis Harris poll of business leaders around the globe to see if they still liked Atlanta.       To their relief, they found their message was getting through despite the bad press. In fact, about one-third of the respondents said Atlanta's handling of the Games caused them to be more favorable about the city.       Still, Williams said a lot of Atlantans were hurt by media barbs. "It's very damaging to so many people," he said. "The average Atlantan was proud of their city for hosting something of this magnitude."       The decades-long effort to bring the Olympics to Salt Lake City has already increased the state's stature in the international sports world. Even before the Games begin, a long list of international competitions will be held here.       Back at the beginning of the bid effort, many international sports officials weren't familiar with Utah. "Most people did not know where Utah was, even on a map," Johnson said       As the head of international relations for both the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games bids, Johnson, along with other bid backers, spent a lot of time showing people around the state.       "Visits became very important to us," Johnson said. "We needed to create an impression of what is here," he said.       That's because about all most people knew about Utah when the bid effort began more than a decade ago was that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is headquartered in Salt Lake City.       "They didn't really understand what the church was. They knew we were part of the American West. That's what people in Europe fell in love with," Johnson said. "That's something that's still very appealing to them."       The sales pitch was so successful with members of the IOC and other leaders of the international sports world that Johnson believes they'll want to return again and again.       Much of the state's appeal lies well beyond the snow-capped Wasatch Front. Southern Utah's red-rock canyons continue to be showcased in Olympic promotions, even though they're far away from any Games sites.       Anyone watching a recent series of commercials produced for NBC is likely to believe Delicate Arch is next to the Wasatch Mountains. During the bid, a scene of a buffalo on Ensign Peak was used in videos.       An image that includes desert as well as snow can only help attract more tourists to the state. Johnson said the European and Asian nations that faithfully follow the Winter Games are among the world's best-traveled.