Mitt Romney walked onto the Olympic stage in 1999 a rich businessman still smarting from losing his first bid for public office. He walked off, three years later, a star-polished candidate who would be elected governor of Massachusetts in a matter of months. This was the place of his emergence and his transition.

In rescuing the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, which had been tarnished by scandal, Mr. Romney learned the ways of Washington and the hurly-burly of politics, mastered the news media, built a staff of loyalists and made fund-raising connections in Utah that have proven vital to his presidential campaign.