Sixty-six percent of Utahns polled by Dan Jones and Associates for the Deseret News and KSL-TV said they favored Salt Lake City hosting a Summer Games. Even more residents, 69 percent, said they believed the city would be capable of hosting the Summer Games in 20 or 30 years. A total of 404 Utahns were questioned March 11-13 for the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.
Despite Utahns' support, the Summer Games aren't likely to come here, an Olympic expert said.
"It certainly seems a bit of a long-shot fantasy," said John MacAloon, an Olympic historian and professor at the University of Chicago. "Salt Lake would be better advised to work on getting another Winter Games in that period."
MacAloon said no city has ever hosted both a Winter and a Summer Games.
Fraser Bullock, the chief operating officer of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, agreed it's unrealistic to think that Utah could host the Summer Games, which are much larger than the Winter Games.
For example, about 4,000 athletes and officials lived in the Olympic Village at the University of Utah and stayed in hotels near Solider Hollow during the Winter Games. That number could be as high as 15,000 for a Summer Games.
"I think people are just basking in the glow of the Olympics," Bullock said.
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"We just hosted the world here. It's a letdown. I understand where the polling is coming from," he said. "While I suppose anything is possible in the very long term, we're much better set up to be a winter Olympic city."
Four U.S. cities are already bidding to be the American candidate for the 2012 Summer Games: Houston, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The final selection will be made in 2005 by the International Olympic Committee.
"The next opportunity to host the Summer Games is far down the road," U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Moran said. "I don't have a crystal ball, but the USOC is clearly committed to bringing the Summer Games back to the United States in 2012 or 2016."
The IOC is looking to scale back the size of the Summer Games, which could help Salt Lake City be considered, Moran said. "Salt Lake's metropolitan population is smaller than recent host cities for the Summer Games, but it doesn't mean it couldn't happen," he said.
Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson's spokesman, Joshua Ewing, said it may be better for Utahns to quit while they're ahead when it comes to the Olympics, given the "enormously larger challenge" of the Summer Games.
"There's something to be said for sticking with what you're good at."
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