Utah's Olympic organizers are pledging to put on another major international sporting event after the 2002 Winter Games end - the Paralympics.
Trustees of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee voted Monday to pay $400,000 to the International Paralympic Committee to host the 10-day event for the world's top disabled athletes.The payment gives organizers all rights to the 2002 Paralympic Games, allowing them to keep whatever they can earn. That's important, because the cost is expected to be between $35 million and $40 million.
The organizing committee's $1 billion budget includes only $10 million for the Paralympics, so the rest will have to be raised by selling everything from T-shirts and tickets to corporate sponsorships and TV rights.
A director for the Paralympics should be hired sometime next year. In the meantime, organizers have already decided they'll market the Winter Games and the Paralympics together.
"We just hope all of our major sponsors participate with the Paralympics," said Gordon Crabtree, the organizing committee's senior vice president of finance. Some have already expressed interest, Crabtree said.
Another revenues source is the 1,100 to 1,300 disabled athletes expected to ski, skate and sled in the 2002 Paralympic Games. Each will be charged a competition fee of about $850 to help offset costs.
The contract between organizers and the Paralympic group is scheduled to be signed next month during an International Olympic Committee meeting in Monte Carlo.
One of the top officials of last summer's Paralympic Games in Atlanta said Utahns have a lot to look forward to.
"It truly is about the right things," said David Simmons, chief operating officer of Atlanta's Paralympics. "The athletes are the first ones to tell you they're not looking for pity, they're looking for respect."
Simmons said Paralympians are every bit as intense as their counterparts in the able-bodied Games. They know, he said, that "if you don't win, you don't take home a medal, you go home empty-handed."
The Atlanta Paralympics were run separately from the 1996 Summer Games, which created a number of problems - especially when it came to raising the $90 million Paralympics budget.
Despite not being allowed by contract to compete with Summer Games marketing efforts, organizers managed by selling sponsorships to a long list of companies, as well as 500,000 tickets and plenty of Paralympic products.
The 2002 Paralympics won't face the same problems because they'll be run by the same committee that's organizing the Winter Games. Simmons said Utah's Olympic organizers have a real commitment to the Paralympics.
"That's a major hurdle," he said. Having to host the Olympics for the disabled is "good for business, good for the community. . . . It's not a liability, it's an asset."