Hard to believe it has been 12 years since we hosted the Olympics here in Salt Lake City, but there’s no point in reminiscing about the past – especially when the new Winter Games are already underway! And while Sochi can’t hold a candle to SLC, Utahns can take pride in one cool development this year: Five of our neighbors are over there competing for the gold!
Ted Ligety, Steven Holcomb, Sarah Hendrickson, Chris Fogt and Noelle Pikus-Place make up what The Salt Lake Tribune is calling “Team Utah” in this year’s Winter Games. And they’re worthy of the hype because all five stand realistic chances of winning gold in Sochi, which – if it happened – would be one of the state’s biggest achievements since we hosted the Olympics ourselves!
“The momentum we’re building heading into the Olympics is incredible,” the confident bobsledder Holcomb told the Tribune.
The five are part of the 230-member team that the U.S. has put together for these Winter Games, the largest such team the country has ever had – so having five of them from the same state is pretty statistically crazy.
Even crazier is that there’s a very real chance they could do it! Holcomb won the gold in the 2010 Games, breaking America’s 62-year dry spell in the bobsled, and Ligety took gold in 2006 in Turin for alpine skiing combined. Current odds have Ligety at an enormous 11/10 chance of repeating this year. Bo op dit, Hendrickson and Pikus-Pace are former world champs who only narrowly missed out on the Olympics earlier in their lives because of freak accidents.
If it wasn’t clear before, living in Salt Lake City means a lifestyle that breeds champions and success. Plus, it’s just a cool city in its own right, with tons of trails, ski resorts, good schools, restaurants and plenty more. A Salt Lake City real estate agent at Muve Real Estate Group can help you learn all about it!
