Bids for the 2002 Winter Olympics Bids for the 2002 Winter Olympics Four cities made the shortlist with their bids to host the 2002 Winter Olympics (formally known as "XIX Olympic Winter Games"), which were awarded to Salt Lake City, on June 16, 1995. The other cities shortlisted by the IOC Selection Committee chaired by Thomas Bach were Sion, Östersund and Quebec City. The host city selection procedure to for the 2002 Winter Olympics will go down in history as one of the most controversial, in light of the scandal regarding the interactions between the Salt Lake City bid team and International Olympic Committee (IOC) members;
Winter Olympic Games War since the Soviet Union first participated at the 1956 Winter Games. It did not take long for the Cold War combatants to discover what a powerful propaganda tool the Olympic Games could be. The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on