Welcome to the the Salt Lake games. Call them what you like, they don't care any more. Mormon meets Mammon. The Mor-Lympics. Skiing with God on your slide. The city that gave us the Bribes of Christ scandal. Tom Humphries skates over the thin ice covering the city that is home to 4,000 missionaries
The British Slalom team were getting off their long haul flight at Salt Lake City airport the other night. Generation Xers. A nose ring and designer haircut sort of a gang. On the ground they were met by the traditional welcome committee. "Hey it's the Brits. Welcome, welcome, welcome. What do you all do?" "Slalom." "Well good for you guys. Will you be trying our Salt Water Taffee? Oh, we're famous for our Salt Water Taffee. Get yourselves credentialed with Julie over here and then we'll go to the shop and try some." "Look mate," said one, "just tell us where we can get the bus."
In your dream of the winter games, the Wasatch mountains and their model tenant, Salt Lake City, are set out like a laid table of pure white linen. Crisp white and crinkled. From the mountains to the salt flats, everything is pure and everything is white. Purer than Marie Osmond. Whiter than Donny's smile. And all of it, all this goodness, is graciously replenished each night by Mother Nature.
Maybe ruddy-faced hearties sip mulled wine or hot ports and stand in front of blazing fires waiting for slow, graceful ski lifts to bring the last of the day's revellers to the summit. One last run and then the von Trapp family will come yomping over the shoulder of the mountain joined by Heidi ringing her cowbell. The simple joy of it all could make you sit up and yodel a happy yodel.
When Salt Lake City first dreamt of holding the Winter Olympics, that perhaps was the vision. Long ago though, the people of Utah woke up to smell the brewing scandal, realised that the world wouldn't stop and taste the taffee but would whine instead about the dearth of lap-dancing clubs.
For a Mormon city to offer to host the games, well, the dream of it had to be perfect. Instead they got a slow nightmare capped off by this fortnight; the games themselves seen as the epilogue to the biggest scandal in Olympic history, the end product of the great sleaze storm which rained down on the heads of the International Olympic Committee, changing the movement forever.
It is forgotten now that, in large part, it was Salt Lake City's overwhelming niceness and quiet capability which won it the right to host these games. When the lid came off the can of worms four years ago, the way the world saw Salt Lake City changed. More than a million dollars in cash and gifts had been given to IOC members or their relatives as the winning bid had been put together. Salt Lake City didn't automatically become Gotham City - the populace was genuinely shocked - yet the world felt licensed suddenly to put the boot in on a way of life.
In a city only half equipped for the old wining-and-dining routine, a more direct route to the hearts of IOC members had been taken. Only an outbreak of drug-crazed nudism among the Amish community would have taken Mormon sleaze off the front pages for the next year or two. The mix of holier-than-thou-hicks with Olympian high-rollers was irresistible. For a conservative state which is still 70 per cent Mormon, it was a tough time.
To be fair, the city has put religion aside for this month. There are no tedious boasts to the effect that you'll never beat the Mormons. When the weather delayed the start of the women's downhill, the crowds didn't break into a chorus of "we don't care if it rains or freezes, cos we got a little plastic Jesus, sitting on the dash of our S.U.V". Indeed, the 4,000 or so missionaries who make this city their base (there are 60,000 Mormon missionaries worldwide) have effectively been stood down for the month. No buttonholing, no knocking on visitors' doors. No conversions.
The locals have been exhibiting their faith through friendliness and good manners. Not that you can't find religious uplift if you need it. Every night during the games, the Mormon church presents its "Light of the World" show at a spanking-new, 21,000-seat conference centre. The Tabernacle Choir have become the aural symbol of the games. And even when you shop in Salt Lake's main downtown mall, you are shopping in a church-owned facility.
It's low key though. As Mitt Romney, the Mormon bishop who heads the Salt Lake Organising Committee, said: "For the church, less is quite often more, especially here and now. The church has a presence here during the games but not an overbearing one, not an intrusive one. If you look at the way sponsors approach the games, the secret is to be effective but not garish. In the church we want to avoid the possibility of a backlash or misinterpretation or the accusation that these have become the Mormon Olympics."
So Salt Lake City adapted. It became a pale imitation of itself. It bounced back from scandal and cast out the wrongdoers. Then came September 11th and the Salt Lake games were suddenly hijacked by something different entirely. They became the most heavily protected sports event in history - 15,000 security personnel surrounding 2,400 athletes. A security budget which once upon a time was under $10 million rose to $310 million.
Salt Lake, once a nice idea hatched by nice people, had morphed from the Mormon Olympics into the Sleaze Games. It was out of control. These games have been turned into something they were never meant to be. They have become, we are told, the Healing Games, the first major world sports event since September 11th. In the name of healing, you can walk for a day here and see more M16s than ski masks.
Patriotism and security blanket the place. Scheduled flights over Salt Lake City must stay 18,000 feet or higher above ground. The air beneath is patrolled by streaking jet planes and Black Hawk helicopters. On all flights into the city, nobody, no matter how dire the crisis in their bladder may be, is permitted to leave their seat for the 30 minutes prior to landing. Our stewardess, when asked what impact the rule might have on somebody wanting to hijack a plane, say 31 minutes from landing, replied darkly that half an hour would be enough time organise a lynching of the hijackers. "People would too," she said smiling. "They surely would."
On the ground in Salt Lake, people are cheerily resigned to being searched several times a day. They have to produce IDs to get to their own homes and workplaces and colleges. Queuing is a way of life. At the main press centre, all electronic and battery-operated appliances must be taken out and their workings demonstrated. Cameras. Radios. Laptops. It's like watching a high-tech rummage sale.
The security operation has cost Salt Lake. A youth-reach programme had to be scrapped from the budget. Some of the money diverted to the safety operation has been drawn away from the budget which would have beautified the city. Set in a stunning fold between mountains, lakes and desert, Salt Lake City is a featureless town dominated physically by its dramatic surroundings and architecturally by the Temple of the Saints and the State Capitol building. Otherwise, it's just a broad grid of streets upon which it is evidently a sinless pleasure to drive large sports utility vehicles.
These aren't the games they dreamed of. Every convulsion changed the nature of these games, changed them utterly. In the end, people came to judge and not to admire. It was even noticed that in a state which has taken the beehive as its municipal symbol, if not its official hairstyle, the odd street corner is scabbed with grey slush but generally the industrious Utahans permitthe snow to lie only in places where the snow is supposed to lie. There's probably a city ordnance about it. In Salt Lake City, the buses run on time, the streets are broad and clean, two martinis is a bender and the people are nice, pleasantville nice.
They say if you are going to lose your wallet at any Olympics, this is the one to lose it at. You'll get it back and the finders will give you a lift home into the bargain.
That's another thing that went wrong. The world came to have a good chuckle at the sheer niceness of it all.
It'll soon be over, the locals tell themselves now. It's good to be different, they say. Lets not permit this time to change us. Lets stay strong.
So, welcome to the Salt Lake games. Call them what you like, they don't care any more. Mormon meets Mammon. The Mor-Lympics. Skiing with God on your slide. The city that gave us the Bribes of Christ scandal.
Welcome. Sure, there is a blond, blue-eyed heartiness to it all that provides an almost Aryan creepiness to the proceedings but that's not the fault of Salt Lake City. Lillehammer wasn't a triumph of diversity either but nobody complained. Life is a little different here, it's true. They knew that starting out, but they thought folks would appreciate it. Listen, the hookers don't cruise by in cars like they did at the Atlanta games and the city hasn't shilled itself shamelessly like Atlanta did. Yet the sheer influx of people, the daunting size of the event, the klieg light intensity of the examination of Mormon life seems to have overwhelmed everyone.
"Everybody is very welcome," says Anne, the shuttle bus driver, "but we'll all be happy when everyone is gone again and we get to tidy up. We just want folks to like us but if they don't, we'd just as soon that they didn't laugh at us. This is our home and if you all don't like it, well you don't have to stay." Perhaps then we can laugh with them.
There's a local beer, a microbrew from the Wasatch Brewery which calls itself Polygamy Porter and trades under the slogan, "Why Have Just One? Bring Some Home to the Wives." Locals point out the Mormon church banned polygamy more than a century ago but they are still deflecting the image with humour.
And pin sellers flog souvenir pins referring to the bribery scandal which brought the games here. The Dirty Games. Sleaze Lake City. And more. Yeah, they see the funny side of it.
One security headache among a plague of them has been caused by a vigilante gang of do-gooders, Utah's so-called Straight Edgers, a clean-living gang of youths who look punky and who use violence to get their message across. Their message is basically what your parents used to tell you. No drinking, smoking drugs or pre-marital sex. At least not in this house. Several Straight Edgers are in prison after a 1998 incident which began with fists, progressed to knives and ended up with gunshots. Like travelling from Cork to Limerick to Belfast in the space of a few moments.
The Straight Edgers have been known to linger outside rock concerts waylaying hapless smokers on the way out. Drunks are also a regular prey. In the main media centre, Straight Edgers are the al-Qaeda of our imaginations.
There has been local grumbling too over the organisers' plan to distribute 12,000 condoms to athletes during the games. Right-wing groups have protested and it was left to Gayle Ruzicka of the Utah Eagle Forum (Can an eagle forum be just right wing?) to ask the question which has been on many minds here. "Where are the Olympic athletes getting their sex partners?
"Are they bringing their own? Or are they going on the streets of Salt Lake City looking for our sons and our daughters?"
So, welcome to a city that quakes before the tyranny of drive-by do-gooders and where a racoon in the dustbin is a big news story, a city that most of all is sick and tired of the dullsville jokes. Here, there was undisguised relief when the first great scandal of the games loomed on Monday night. From the people who gave us Tonya Harding came the golden fleece, the nobbling of the Canadian figure-skating pair, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.
It seemed somehow cruel that the scandal of the games should have involved a Canadian figure-skating pair. We had just begun to comment that Salt Lake City itself is so bland that it could be Canada in microcosm. Anyway, if you have been living on Mars you will not know yet that the Canadians were beaten in fishy circumstances by the Russians, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, early in the week.
As the week wore on and the controversy showed no signs of blowing over, Canadians struggled hard to be reasonable and their neighbours, the Americans, went wild on their behalf. The story lost nothing along the way. Why, the Canadians had danced like fairies on a winter pond. The Russians had been all over the place like a couple of drunken hogs on ice. There should be a war not just on terrorism but on crooked skating judges.
The story of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier played out as end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it drama. CNN went into breaking news mode to cover dull Canadian press conferences where officials were so livid that they could have, ooh, crushed a grape.
One news show wheeled on G. Gordon Liddy to denounce the dastardly Russians. The New York Times inconclusively ran a sort of print version of the Zapruder film. It was agreed among the media masses that the Canadians were generally cuter than the Russians and that went for their figure skating too.
The story suggested that post-September 11th, the American appetite for trivia is fully restored. It highlighted also, perhaps, the most insidious threat provided by the winter Olympics: we should worry not that Mormons are being laughed at but we should tremble in contemplation of the fact that for two weeks, we all, one billion viewers and thousands of vulnerable journalists, are held hostage by a handful of fanatics, snow buffs, those half dozen or so people in the world who know what they are talking about when they talk about the winter games.
For the rest of us, one dumb opinion is generally as valid as the other. Only Finland and Norway really care. For everyone else, the winterfest is full of joyful mysteries, unlikely sporting curiosities unveiled for us every four years. At Lake Placid 22 years ago, there were 38 competitions. Now there are 78. Yippee! Who knows if the Russians stepped slightly out of their double toe loop during the combination jump? Indeed, who among us wouldn't do the same? Who can really tell if a snowboarder got bigger backside air on the halfpipe than his vanquished rival? Are freestyle moguls not just rich business people? What are the physiological advantages given to this life's born lugers? Will there ever be a clean sweep of the curling events? The arcane arguments among those who care and those who slip and slide for a living go on forever. The winter games are their Christmas, the chance to give old feuds an airing over dinner, in front of strangers.
As for those scandal-frosted skaters? If you choose to participate in a judged sport, them's the risks you take. If Russia, China, Poland and Ukraine compose four of the five who give the gold to Russia (the other was France) and the US, Canada, Germany and Japan all gave it to Canada, well maybe your sport was crocked to start with or maybe you need a foreign policy shift.
If, however, like the Canadians you opt to skate (yet again) to the theme from the dreaded schmaltzball movie, Love Story, then perhaps you deserve all the poignant heartbreak you reap.
In Salt Lake City the folks have just been glad of the distraction. Soon it will be all over, soon this will be a world safe again for Salt Water Taffee addicts and tabernacle choristers.