The 2002 Olympic Winter Games were held in Salt Lake City, Utah.

By early 1999, the event was $379 million in debt.  It was announced that Frank Joklik, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC), and Dave Johnson, vice president, along with others had been involved in perks, benefits, and bribes that enabled Salt Lake City to be the host city for the 2002 Olympic Games.  Joklik resigned of his own free will.  Johnson, however,  was forced.

Then, on February 11, 1999, Mitt Romney left a successful entrepreneur career to be hired as the new CEO and president of the SLOC.

Romney has a history of rescuing large organizations from financial disaster (Bain and Company, 1990).  The salvation of the 2002 Games was no different.

In his three years at the helm in Salt Lake, Romney erased a $379 million operating deficit, organized 23,000 volunteers, galvanized community spirit and oversaw an unprecedented security mobilization just months after the September 11th terrorist attacks, leading to one of the most successful Olympics in our country’s history. (http://www.freestrongamerica.com/pa/ge/55/learn-about-mitt).

Thus, instead of being $279 million deficit, the event ended up with a profit of $100 million.  Romney spent a million dollars of his own money on the Olympics, and donated the $825,000 salary he earned as president and CEO of the SLOC to charity (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/672kwvro.asp).

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