'We Have Everything' (Exclusive): Lindsey Vonn Excited to Bring Winter Olympics Back to Salt Lake City in 2034

The 2034 Winter Olympics are coming to Salt Lake City — and Lindsey Vonn couldn’t be more excited!

A member of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games, the three-time Olympic medalist tells PEOPLE exclusively that the city has long been ready for the opportunity to host its second Winter Olympics.

“With Salt Lake, not only do we have the infrastructure from 2002, but everything is really close,” Vonn, 39, says. “I think that, just in general, changes everything.”

She adds, “I think it's a lot to do with sustainability. When we had the Olympics in 2002, they created an endowment to help maintain all of the Olympic venues. And we host international competitions at pretty much every venue every year. And all of our venues are incredibly well maintained, and that's not normal.”

The announcement from Paris on Wednesday, July 24 made the news official, months after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) cleared Utah's capital as a “preferred host” for the games.

A veteran of four Olympic teams, the legendary downhill skier is familiar with the peaks and valleys, so to speak, of international competition. “There's usually something that has to be built, whether it's a stadium or an entire venue or a bobsled track,” she says. “Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics was basically an entire village that was created just for the games.” 

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"But we have everything already in place. We don't need to build anything, we're sustainable... I think with global warming, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find venues that have enough natural snow and can guarantee that in February we can host the Olympics," she continues.

Vonn adds, "Even in Vancouver, we had a l -

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ot of trouble with rain. It was raining for the first four days of the game. And so I think all of those factors combined make Salt Lake the ideal location for a Winter Olympics.”

As the chair of athlete experience, Vonn has also vowed in 2034 to change the way families enjoy the Olympics, with the creation of a family village that is similar to the athletes’ Olympic Village.

“It’s just going to make life so much easier for everyone involved,” she tells PEOPLE. “I mean, my family, even in Salt Lake 2002, my family had a hard time finding a place to stay. You think of how many people are coming into that city to spectate, where are the families going to go? They can't pay a premium on the big hotels. My family stayed at my second cousin's house in Salt Lake City and slept on the floor.” 

Some 16 years later — at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea — Vonn recalls that her loved ones still struggled with the logistics of watching her compete. “I mean, in Korea, my family was staying three hours away by train,” she says. “And it was really challenging, my mom was in a wheelchair and just the accessibility component was a huge, huge challenge.”

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Instead of fully focusing on the competition at hand, athletes frequently find themselves distracted by family members' needs, Vonn says, explaining: “Me as an athlete, I'm worried, ‘Is my mom able to get to the finish area? Is my family even going to make it there on time?’ So I am really excited about this family village."

The skiing champion adds, "I think it's going to put the emphasis where it should go and have the athletes be able to focus on what they need to focus on and have their families be supported at the same time."

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