2022 Reno-Tahoe Olympic crew seeks support as time ticks

By Susan Wood

The Reno-Tahoe Winter Games Coalition has a deadline to drum up support for its quest to bring the 2022 Winter Games back to the region 62 years after Squaw Valley hosted them in 1960.

Based on the past, the U.S. Olympic Committee is expected to court bids from interested cities in early 2012, Chief Executive Officer Jon Killoran told Lake Tahoe News Tuesday when asked what was new since the last report.

“But they could ask us about it tomorrow,” he said. This is why Killoran and others are out courting potential backers who would be part of the Reno-Tahoe Games.

If the USOC wants the Tahoe-Reno region to host the Games in 2022, the organization will take its national bid to the International Olympic Committee for consideration in 2013, Killoran speculated.

In the meantime, the coalition has made the rounds to meet with various recreation venue managers and tourism advocates. Killoran met with Chris Hawken, interim director of the South Lake Tahoe Parks and Recreation Departmenet, about the ice arena in September. The visit wasn’t designed to check out the arena as a venue, but Killoran didn’t rule it out either.

Hawken said it most likely would be used as a training site, not for competition. The rink size if National Hockey League compatible, but not Olympic-size, Hawken told LTN.

Truckee Mayor Carolyn Dee, who is also Squaw’s director of Business Administration, said she thought it would be smart to look at the South Tahoe rink.

Reno Sparks Convention and Visitors Bureau spokesman Ben McDonald said his agency, which serves on the Winter Games Committee, has pledged support in the planning process — but nothing specific thus far.

The group has stayed afloat during this planning stage with the help of agencies such as the Nevada Commission on Tourism with a $10,000 grant. The coalition hopes to cultivate private donors as its membership expands and it undergoes a reorganization.

Tahoe-Reno’s dream of hosting the Winter Games again has been bumped from 2014 to 2018 before 2022 appeared to be closer to reality once Chicago lost its bid for the 2016 Summer Games.

Speculation lingers that Denver is interested in hosting 2022 as well as Salt Lake City. The Utah city operated on a $3 billion budget that brought in a $76 million profit in 2002.

Lake Placid, N.Y., hosted the Games for the United States twice — but those years were 48 years apart from its first 1932 Games.