LA 2024 focused on that Olympic Games during IOC visit, not 2028 possibility
LOS ANGELES — Organizers for Los Angeles’ bid for the 2024 Olympics will concede that considering awarding the 2028 Games now is a smart move for the International Olympic Committee.
They just don’t think it’s their city and their bid that should be put off.
The IOC’s evaluation commission wrapped up three days here on Friday, concluding a visit that will be the foundation of a report it will deliver to the IOC in July. Ostensibly, that report is intended to inform the vote for the 2024 Games.
But with the IOC facing a shortage of cities willing to take on the Games and two quality bids, it is considering giving one city the 2024 Games and another the 2028 Olympics when it votes in September in Lima, Peru.
“What if we had seven years to spend not on construction but seven years to spend on collaboration? To look at the ways that the IOC and the federations, the National Olympic Committees and the athletes could make the absolute best of the time that they have?,” Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti said. “That’s LA 2024. Those opportunities are why we believe that Los Angeles offers the greatest benefits to the Olympic movement in 2024. Why wait until 2028 to experience it?”
Speculation of a dual award has grown since December, when IOC president Thomas Bach opined that the bid process produces “too many losers.”
To make one of L.A. or Paris carries significant weight. It would be a third rejected United States bid, after New York’s for 2012 and Chicago’s for 2016, and a third rejected bid for Paris for the Games this century.
Speculation moved closer to a trajectory in March when the IOC announced a working group made up of its four IOC vice presidents that would study the bidding process and make a recommendation in July.
LA 2024 chairman Casey Wasserman said the IOC met with representatives of both bids in Denmark at the SportAccord Convention last month to explain that process.
It’s clear, some change is needed.
In the last two bid cycles, twice as many cities (eight) have pulled out of the bidding process — thanks largely to opposition or lack of political support — as have remained to the vote (four).
Los Angeles’ leadership agrees that change is worthwhile.
“I think any city would have to look at the terms of if the rules change, what a 2028 award means,” Garcetti said. “I know Paris has at times said, no, it’s ’24 or nothing. I really do believe in this movement. I will look at that any given time. Our committee will look at that at any given time if the rules change. But I look at that as much for Paris as I look at it for LA.”
The possibility of a dual award hung as a specter around the commission’s visit. L.A. organizers weren’t so much making the case that their bid is worthy of the Games — a consensus is clear that both bids are — but that it deserves to have the 2024 Olympics it is bidding for.
Putting Los Angeles off would be to miss the opportunity for a transformative moment, one LA 2024 organizers think they can deliver in part by avoiding the runaway construction costs that have come to define Games of late.
The LA 2024 bid does not require the construction of any permanent venues, instead relying on existing or temporary venues.
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Though talk of a 2028 Olympics loomed, the evaluation commission did not wade into the discussion.
Asked repeatedly about the prospect of the IOC awarding a Games to each Los Angeles and Paris, evaluation commission chairman Patrick Baumann said those discussions are at the executive level of the IOC.
“That’s not for us,” Baumann said. “The evaluation commission is for 2024.”
The IOC has only once before awarded two Olympics at the same time. According to Olympic historian Bill Mallon, the IOC in 1921 awarded the 1924 Games to Paris because Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, was retiring and wanted to have the Games in his home country. At the same time, the IOC awarded the 1928 Olympics to Amsterdam.
As an idea, LA 2024 leaders are supportive of a similar approach.
But following a three-day visit that left commission members impressed — Baumann called the venues everything from “spectacular” to “mind-blowing” — L.A. organizers feel they made their case for securing the Games they’ve been bidding for.
“I’d love to go to Paris in 2028 and see my friends there,” Garcetti said. “I always campaign like I’m 10 points behind, and I think that we never have believed we’re anything but an underdog in this campaign. That said, I feel stronger and stronger.”
