Park City’s Olympic travel plans will soon resume, but what can we learn from the experiences of Atlanta, Nagano and Sydney?

Mayor Nann Worel will travel to Paris at the end of July as part of the official state delegation to the meetings of the International Olympic Committee on the eve of the Summer Olympics in the French capital.

The awarding of the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City is scheduled for July 24 and the mayor plans to remain in France for a fact-finding mission during the first days of the Games.

But what lessons could the mayor take from the Paris Games and bring back to Park City, so that the community can begin to discuss the 2034 event more vigorously in the coming year?

The trip will be the city’s first official outing to the Olympics — summer or winter — since the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. The 2000 Games were the last to be held before the 2002 Winter Olympics, when the Park City area hosted more than 50 percent of the events, and the last opportunity for a previous generation of Park City leaders to study the Games in person.

The mayor’s trip to Paris will almost certainly be the first in a series of Olympic-related trips for the city hall. There will be two Winter Olympics before 2034, in 2026 and 2030, and two Summer Olympics after this year’s, in 2028 and 2032, before 2034.

The city will likely want to observe the transportation systems used by the organizers of the upcoming Games, learn about the impacts on businesses and study plans for celebrations and security. That kind of information is thought to be best obtained in person, and that line of thinking influenced Park City officials who planned the 2002 Games.

More than 22 years after the Olympic cauldron was extinguished at the end of the Salt Lake City Winter Games, the trips by city officials in the years leading up to 2002 are once again worth highlighting. Much of what was learned during those Olympic visits seems to remain relevant today, as Park City prepares for the early stages of planning for the state’s second Games and the community once again plays a crucial role in the overall concept.

A document produced by City Hall in the months after the Games closed in 2002, “The Park City Experience,” offers a glimpse into the previous Olympic era and the city’s role in hosting the event.

Key points from the travel sections are included as lessons learned from each of the Games, which city hall leaders have attempted to incorporate into plans for 2002. In some cases, the lessons identified by city government were broad, even thematic, and in others they focused on specific issues.

“When the 2002 Winter Games were awarded to Salt Lake City in June 1995, we realized with some sobering realization that it was one thing to campaign for the Games, but quite another to actually host them,” the 2002 city hall document reads.

The document presents lessons learned by the city during its trips to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and the Sydney Summer Olympics two years later. It also includes information on visits to Lillehammer, Norway, host of the 1994 Winter Olympics, and Albertville, France, host of the 1992 Winter Olympics, after those cities had hosted the Games.

One of the sections devoted to lessons learned in Atlanta, regarding the relationship between an Olympic organizing committee and the communities where the Games are located, was remarkable then and still is today. The work between an organizing committee and communities is one of the most important tasks in planning the Games, and the subject was a source of much concern in 1996.

“Relations between the local community and ACOG were generally unsatisfactory, according to local government officials,” the document said, referring to the Atlanta Games organizing committee by an acronym.

There was a “lack of understanding about how (or whether) local government costs should be reimbursed” and there were “troubled contractual relationships with ACOG.”

“There appears to be considerable jurisdictional friction between cities, counties and various state agencies, much of which appears to predate the Olympics but is nonetheless detrimental to the resolution of issues of common concern,” the document said of the Atlanta Games.

Some Lessons Learned in Atlanta:

• “Major logistical challenges have often been overcome by pooling resources, particularly in the area of ​​public safety.”

• “The successful site communities appear to be those that have significantly developed facilities that could serve as economic development legacies, notably Columbus and Conyers, even if this has not necessarily translated into positive relationships with ACOG.”

• “Some venue communities were facing serious budget shortfalls due to lack of planning, lack of understanding of resource impacts, lack of support from ACOG or the state – these included Gainesville, Hall County, Rockdale County, Conyers and Savannah.”

• “Areas that already had a tourism industry suffered a significant economic downturn during the Olympic year, particularly the city of Savannah and the Buckhead area of ​​Atlanta.”

Some lessons learned in Nagano:

• “Host communities might be more successful by sticking to each other and showcasing local culture.”

• “Utah needed to prepare its ski and tourism industries for the economic downturn associated with the Games.”

• “Public gathering places are an Olympic reality that must be managed, produced and programmed in a specific way.”

• “Logistics planners must develop contingency plans to address weather-related schedule changes. Delays have cascading impacts on transportation, security and traffic management plans.”

Some lessons learned in Sydney:

• “Business interests in areas far from Olympic venues were generally supportive of the Games, although business was stagnant or declining in many places.”

• “The public celebration of the Games is an increasingly important aspect of the contemporary Olympic Games.”

• “Communities around Sydney needed to be aware of ambush marketing activities and were themselves involved in protecting and enforcing Olympic brands.”

• “The Olympic legacy was highlighted and very important to the communities in the Sydney venues – the legacy was not necessarily physical or tangible, some were organisational or behavioural.”