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Show I - - 'y v -t I Olympic party today By JACK FORISK.A Staff Writer SALT LAKE CITY A mammoth party will be staged at Washington Square in Salt Lake City today in anticipation of the International In-ternational Olympic Committee s announcement of who will host the 1998 Winter Olympic Games. Bountiful resident and four time Olympic competitor Henry Marsh will begin the celebration by carrying carry-ing the Olympic Torch from the Utah States Capitol Building down to the square to start the festivities. Marsh, who served on the Olympic Olym-pic Executive Board for 1 1 years, (1979-90) is currently the vice president of the Utah Bid Committee Com-mittee and Chairman of the Procurement Pro-curement Committee. He has been working on bringing the Olympics to Utah since 1985 and says at this point he thinks our chances of getting get-ting the 98 bid are "50-50." "It's so close you can't really handicap it because you don't know what is going on in the heads of the IOC," he said. If the decision was based solely on who is able to the best job, "Utah would win hands down," said Marsh. But he feels that japan has a strong bid due to the geography geog-raphy of the situation. The Winter Games have not been held in Asia since Sapporo, Japan hosted them in 72. Competition at the convention being held in Birmingham, England has been intense for the last week. And Utah, who got off to a slow start, is in the heat of the lobbying. Salt Lake City Mayor Palmer De Paulis and Gov. Norman Bangerter as well as Bid Committee Chairman Thomas Welch are in the thick of it. Welch was quoted earlier in the week as saying if Utah doesn't get the bid for 98 that he wasn't sure if SEE MARSH ON A-2 Phillips 66 Company is considering the sale of its Woods Cross refinery and related product terminals and marketing properties. The refinery has a processing capacity of 25,000 barrels of crude oil a day, eight percent of the company's U.S. refining capacity. Marsh tONTTMUED'FROMA-l -. Utah would Stay in the running for the 2002 bid, but Marsh says that was just a strategy. He said, ' ' Welch 's statement was just a strategy. We will definitely go for it. We have a commitment to the U.S. Olympic Committee to complete com-plete construction of our facilities by 1992. There is no turning back now. ' ' Marsh, whose event is the steeplechase, came out of nowhere in 1976 to make the Olympic team, then finished tenth in the competition competi-tion at Montreal. In 1980 Marsh was named the most outstanding male athlete at the Olympic trials but was not able to come home with an Olympic medal because of America's boycott of the games that year. At that time he had the fastest time in world in his event a record. Since then, an ongoing viral infection in-fection has kept Marsh from training train-ing at full capacity and he has fallen just short of the medals. In L.A. in 1984 he finished fourth. Right now Marsh is working with doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center who are trying to isolate the virus, in the hope they can medicate the symptoms. Marsh would like to compete in '92 but says, "If my health was good I'd love it, but right now it's not my biggest priority." Marsh says he knows this is probably his last chance. Whether we get the bid or not, the party planned for today will be a grand affair. Workers have constructed ski jumps a luge run and other winter sports paraphernalia parapher-nalia to facilitate a bevy of demonstrations demon-strations being staged for the crowd that will be on hand for the IOC's announcement. The decision will be transmitted live to Washington Square via satellite and be shown on a huge TV screen that has been set up. Marsh will begin the events of the day at 9 a.m. He will carry a torch, tor-ch, which will be lighted at the State Capitol building, down State Street to the square. There he will run through a corridor of children waving wav-ing flags of the nations of the world, and then light the torch that has been set up at the Salt Lake City and County Building. The IOC's announcement is expected ex-pected to come some time between 10 a.m. and noon. |