The Olympics not only represents the pinnacle of sport and that encouraging breath of peace among nations. This is the apex of event planning, as well.The point became clear during a panel discussion Tuesday during a Park City Rotary Club lunch at the Sheraton.Tom Kelly, retired from U.S. Ski and Snowboard but everywhere nonetheless, interviewed Park City Mayor Nann Worel, chamber CEO Jennifer Wesselhoff, Olympic Legacy Foundation chief Colin Hilton, and Summit County Councilor Malena Stevens.The giddy moment in Paris when Utah won the 2034 Winter Games has passed, the Summer Olympics is done, and a long decade’s countdown has just begun. What now?Well, considerations like uniformity where this matters — uniforms included. Stevens and Hilton talked about that takeaway from the Paris Olympic experience. The organizers brought consistency across many jurisdictions involved in the Summer Games where it was helpful for spectators, Stevens said.That was just one of many lessons from observation at the Games, she said.“So being able to go and see what Paris did, we also had the opportunity to sit down with staffers within Paris and get some inside looks into how they organized the Games, what their objectives were, specifically along the lines of sustainability, volunteering, community engagement and otherwise,” Stevens said.Wesselhoff, thinking about Olympics staff in Paris pouring water from plastic bottles into reusable cups, said she saw where Park City and Utah can do better in terms of actual sustainability.But she also was wowed at Paris cleaning up the Seine in time for their Games. In part it was from necessity, since Paris doesn’t have a stadium capable of hosting an opening ceremony. The river provided a memorable alternative.An event planning gauntlet was definitely thrown down, to hear Wesselhoff, Stevens and Worel.Worel expressed admiration for how the Paris planners in essence herded stray cats to get all the various entities in relatively good order.Even normally strike-prone labor unions made an exception for Olympics garb and such, Stevens said. Everything that needed making got made on time as a result — 11,000 portable chairs made from recycled material, as one example.Worel talked about Utah mayors getting together and announced a compact of community leaders here to team up to help meet and exceed the Paris experience. Wesselhof and Stevens listened with determined nods.Worel also discussed key ties with sister city Courville, France, trading information and people such as snowmakers and groomers to learn from each other as the communities prepare for their next Winter Games — 2030 for France and 2034 here.Hilton cautioned, well, caution with organizations wanting to do events in Park City in the long lead-up to 2034. The world bobsled championships are scheduled for 2029, which works. But others may not. Just be careful, he said.“We have to be selective in what events we do because everybody and their brother in these different sports federations are going to want to do their event in Utah,” he said. “So we’re being very cautious in how fast and how many we do.”Meantime, the bid committee that won the Olympics is breaking up to form Utah’s Olympic organizing committee, with plenty of the same people. Less than 10 years remain on the clock until the Games begin, and time will go quickly, Hilton warned.But Utah is ahead of the usual pace, with all the Olympics competition venues locked up already, for instance. The state and Park City have momentum as well as previous experience on their side. Still, there’s plenty to learn. The community use of Paris venues opened his eyes, Hilton said.“The biggest takeaway for me of what we’ll use here in Utah is they did a lot of sports exhibitions at the actual Olympic competition venues,” he said and told a story about the skateboard park in Paris after the Olympians competed.“They gave a ticket to every local citizen to be able to come out and see the kids in the community performing at the Olympic venue in skateboard, and they didn’t care that this wasn’t the Olympic event,” he said. “So I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ we’ve got to do this for the slopeside big air competition in downtown Salt Lake City.”Worel, addressing infrastructure and the need for Summit County and Park City of course to work as a team, mentioned she sat with state Rep. Jon Hawkins, one of the legislators assigned to Olympic funding for the state, at the International Olympic Committee meeting at which Utah and France were announced as hosts.“So we had about four hours to bond and talk about what Park City’s needs might be,” she said. “I think we’re well on the way.”The post Park City sizes up long haul to 2034 Games and glory appeared first on Park Record.