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 $379 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).

It was a selfless motive that led Mitt to return to Utah at a comfortable point in his family life and career at Bain, to salvage the Olympics and resuscitate the spirit of the games.  He didn’t do it for the glory, the applause, the money, the attention.  He made an inconvenient move for the Lord’s convenience and for the sake of good. Those kinds of decisions aren’t bred in a moment. They come from a lifestyle of choices, from an attitude of yielding to what’s right and best.  They may also be reflections of his mother’s moral core and mantra, “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?”  Encouraged by his visionary and faithful wife, Ann, Mitt made the move and never looked back.

And it was for the best.  He did reclaim the process and rectified the wounds of prominent officials who had been dishonorable in bribing and accepting bribes proposed to them.  He dealt with tremendous opposition–canceled corporate sponsors, the need for increased security due to threats of all kinds, a fearful NBC concerned with its $545 million investment, and more. Yet he methodically worked the numbers as he always does, and they told him what he needed to know.  “The Winter Olympics began with a projected deficit of $379 million. By the end of the games, a surplus of $55 million remained” (Turner & Field, Mitt Romney, Mapletree Publishing, p 28). He rescued the Olympics and restored the spirit that enveloped the celebration.  As Governor Leavitt stated:

I realized I was participating in one of the few moments in the history of the state where everyone’s hearts were beating hard together. It didn’t matter where you were . . . if you pulled over to the side of the road to listen,  if you huddled around the television at work, or you had your children in the family room, the same thing was happening (NBC Report Leading Up to Opening Ceremonies).

The eyes of the world were on Utah in February as Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Much attention was focused on the Church as its leaders and members joined with the Salt Lake community in welcoming the world. “It goes clear back to the book of Isaiah, which says that Zion would be established at the tops of the mountains and that the nations of the world would come there,” said Elder Henry B. Eyring of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in a Los Angeles Times article. “In a sense we expected it. Only, the prophecies didn’t say anything about downhill skiing.”

Mitt Romney was the man of the hour.

Additional Resources:

Learn more about the Mormon Church at the official site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (inadvertently called by friends of other faiths as the “Mormon Church”).

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