By John Sanko
Denver Rocky Mountain News Capitol Bureau

Colorado stunned the world in 1972.

With a brash young lawyer-lawmaker named Dick Lamm leading the way, residents said they didn't want the 1976 Winter Olympics.

And they said it in a big way. The landmark vote on Nov. 7, 1972, wasn't even close -- 514,228 to 350,964. A 59.4 percent majority said they weren't willing to spend tax dollars to have the Games in their state.

It was an amazing turnaround from just 21/2 years earlier, when a small Denver group returned as conquering heroes from Amsterdam after meeting with the International Olympic Committee.

They were greeted with a brass band and a motorcade through downtown Denver after the city was awarded the Olympics.

Many thought they deserved it. Efforts to get a Winter Olympics for Colorado had begun in 1954 when Colorado Springs and Aspen made a joint effort to get the 1960 Games.

But now, having won the Games, concerns about their potential cost quickly began to alarm some Coloradans.

For others, the issue was the environment -- damage that supposedly would be caused by hordes descending on the sites of competition. No previous Winter Olympics venue had ever planned to hold the Games across such a huge area -- from Denver to Steamboat Springs, a 166-mile distance.

With still others, it was the idea that more people might be lured into moving to a state that already was attracting newcomers with its snow-capped mountain peaks and wide-open spaces.

The IOC had been clear from the start. If Coloradans refused to help pay the cost, the committee would move the Games to another site. And it did -- to Innsbruck, Austria, which had hosted the Games 12 years earlier.

Sidney Bullene, the first staff member on the Denver Organizing Committee, said the ballot language was confusing.

"No meant yes and yes meant no," Bullene said of the proposal. "That's what killed us."

But she concedes that the Denver committee and its supporters were partly at fault.

"We got very complacent," she said. "Nobody really realized we might lose this whole thing and disgrace ourselves in the eyes of the whole world."

Denver City Councilman Dennis Gallagher, then a member of the Colorado House of Representatives, surveyed his constituents shortly before the election. The state was promising it would spend no more than $5 million on the Games.

"The survey cards came back 80 percent against, and we all knew then that the idea was in trouble," Gallagher said. "For once, the voters were not persuaded by the appeals that money would eventually trickle down to the workers.

"The promoters never asked the people how they felt, and the arrogance of some Olympic boosters turned everyone off -- they tried to imply you lacked patriotism if you were not for the Olympics."

No city, state or nation ever had rejected the Games after they had been awarded. And it has never happened since.

The state bid for later Games, including the 2002 Olympics that were awarded to Salt Lake City.

There are mixed opinions about whether the Colorado vote had any long-range consequences in the state. It did propel Lamm into the limelight and helped him win the governorship two years later -- a post he held for 12 years.

The anti-Olympics vote certainly didn't stop growth. The population has surged from 2,378,318 people in 1972 to 4,030,881 in 1998, according to figures compiled by the Colorado Division of Local Government.

Today, Lamm remains convinced that Coloradans did the right thing. He said it was the only choice left -- either eat the tremendous cost involved or bail out.

Coloradans learned that the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley had cost California about $13.5 million -- more than 13 times original estimates.

Innsbruck spent $20 million on the 1964 Games, and Grenoble, France, spent $14.7 million for facilities alone for the 1968 Games. Sapporo, Japan, was predicting it would spend more than $17 million for facilities in 1972.

Lamm admits he is disappointed that the vote didn't result in more sensible growth in Colorado.

"My disappointment is that the Colorado I was afraid was going to happen with the Olympics happened without the Olympics," he said. "I'm not apologizing for what we did. But nevertheless, I'm looking back on lost opportunity. I don't like what Denver has become. I mourn Colorado. I am truly so sorry that Colorado has become what it has become when I had a different vision."

If there is any lasting impact, some think that Colorado's vote in 1972 will prevent it from ever being the U.S. nominee as the host site. But Mike Moran, a spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs, disagrees.

"I don't think the likelihood of any city in America hosting the Winter Games is probably practical until after 2020," Moran said.

"But everyone here in this organization is quite clear there are no lasting effects from the vote in 1972. We'd be tickled pink to look at Denver in the future. I think Denver is capable of hosting the summer Olympics as well. Denver has everything it needs."

His view isn't shared by Bullene or former Gov. John Vanderhoof, who tried to keep the 1976 Games.

"I don't think the IOC will ever give us the Olympics again," Bullene said. "We will never ever see the Olympics here again -- not in our lifetimes."

Bullene said Lamm used the Olympics as a campaign ploy and did a disservice to Colorado.

Vanderhoof, who was Colorado's lieutenant governor at the time of the vote and a member of the Colorado Olympic Committee, recalls how he and the late former Denver Mayor Bill McNichols traveled to Munich to assure worried IOC members that Colorado voters would reject the ballot measure.

"I can remember Bill McNichols and me telling them there was nothing to worry about, we were going to win it by 2-to-1," Vanderhoof said. "I sat there and told the Russians that and learned a hard lesson."

Vanderhoof blames several factors for the negative vote -- a strong environmentalist movement that began in the '60s and was at its peak, inadequate preparations for funding the Games and growing reports of financial losses from previous Olympics.

"It was just not ordained to be, in my opinion, but we could have done it and we could have done it very well," Vanderhoof said. "We just weren't prepared to put on a good campaign."

But he doesn't think there has been much lasting impact from the vote.

"We've got such a wonderful place and a great climate," Vanderhoof said. "You don't need to sell it -- it sells itself. The state probably would have grown quicker, but I don't think it would have been any more than now."

Colorado Milestones, which appears Tuesdays, is part of a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society. Digital and print copies of historical images available at the Colorado Historical Society (303) 866-2305.

Online: InsideDenver.com, keyword "2000."

On TV: at 10 p.m.: Colorado History: Lowell Thomas became the world's premier adventurer and broadcaster but never forgot his Colorado roots.

October 12, 1999

Colorado Millennium 2000 is a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society
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