2002 Winter Olympics

The 2002 Winter Olympics (Salt Lake City) is the central case study of Turnaround, Mitt Romney’s account of rescuing the scandal-and-deficit-plagued Games. The book mines the experience for Romney’s general Turnarounds formula — strategic audit, then build the team, then “focus, focus, focus” — applied to an event rather than a business. Several of its most-quoted moments are set at the Games: the budget built “bottom-up” under Fraser Bullock’s eye, the reliance on Ann Romney’s daily counsel (“I simply could not turnaround the Olympics without her”), and the post-9/11 framing of the opening ceremony as proof that “even in an uncertain world, civilization would proceed, nations would gather, freedom would ring.” The Games are positioned in the Romney corpus as the proving ground for the operational and leadership principles he carries into business and public service.

Context: The 2002 Winter Olympic Games were held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in February 2002. Mitt Romney was hired as president and CEO of the organizing committee in 1999 after a bribery scandal and budget crisis, and the Games are widely credited as a financial and operational success.

Where this appears

• Turnaround — the book’s central case study; Romney’s turnaround formula applied to rescuing the Salt Lake Games.