USOPC Bullish on Chances of Success at 2026 Winter Olympics

Even with all of the attention that has been  focused on the two upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games hosted in the United States over the next decade, there was the reminder during this week’s USOPC Assembly in Salt Lake City that its athletes will be competing in Italy in the 2026 Winter Games in less than four months.

“We are incredibly excited about the performance that you’re going to see from Team USA,” said Gene Sykes, chair of the USOPC Board of Directors and IOC member. “We think this could be the all-time high in terms of Team USA performance. Those of you who go, I think you’ll have an exceptional experience.”

Sykes also mentioned the IOC’s deal with NBC for U.S. TV rights made in March this year through the 2036 Games, of which there is not a host. IOC President Kirsty Coventry was on the “Today” show in the past week as part of the buildup to Milan-Cortina.

“They did that because Utah has 2034,” Sykes said. “That’s what made (NBC) confident enough to say, we’re going to invest another several billion dollars in our commitment for the future, even without knowing anything about what media will look like 12 years down the road. So it’s an incredible testament to their confidence in how well these Games will come off and how excited they are about that.”

Sykes gave an organizational update during a meeting of the steering committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, noting the Games’ return to Utah after it hosted in 2022 just as, in 2028, Los Angeles will be hosting the Summer Games for the third time and first since 1984.

“We just have to bank that tremendous legacy of what people before us did,” Sykes said. “In (SLC34’s) case, some of the same people are still here. And I will tell you that Peter Ueberroth, the organizer of the 1984 Games, is very near to all of us in Los Angeles, and so we’re very proud to be part of something which is a continuing legacy in this country. And I think it’s a great testament to what it means to be Americans and participate in this incredible movement.”

The movement has also changed dramatically in the past year with the election of IOC President Kirsty Coventry. Once Coventry assumed the presidency from Thomas Bach, she held a two-day workshop to get feedback from members including Sykes.

“The first day she was in office, it’s almost as if she’d changed everything,” Sykes said. “She said, ‘We’re going to do this differently.’ Rather than do the things the way we’ve done them before, we’re going to pause and we’re going to reflect, then we’re going to think about what we really want to do. It was an incredibly well-prepared, very thoughtful exercise where we all weighed in and they invited us to say anything we wanted to say, provide every idea to be as provocative as we could be. And I will tell you with a lot of confidence, there is a change coming and change will be positive.”

In the midst of what the USOPC has been referring to as “The Golden Decade,” there was even a joke during the steering committee meeting about hosting the 2050 Winter Games. Whether serious or not, it was hinted that the Games’ presence in the U.S. will certainly not end in eight years’ time.

“I’m quite confident that when this next decade is behind us, we’ll look back and say, we’ve made this movement much more meaningful than it ever was before,” Sykes said. “And our children and our grandchildren, whether in Utah or Los Angeles or someplace else in the United States, when they take up the mettle of hosting the Games in the future, they’re going to have a legacy if they can count on to help them.”