LOS ANGELES – It’s Los Angeles’ turn to take the torch. Mayor Karen Bass accepted the Olympic flag at the Paris closing ceremony Sunday, before handing it off to a prominent representative of local Los Angeles businesses – Tom Cruise — which in a pre-recorded walk by motorcycle, plane and parachute started the countdown to 2028.
The city will become the third in the world to host the games three times, adding to the storied years of 1932 and 1984. Here’s a look back at the Los Angeles Olympics.
Los Angeles won the 2028 games as a consolation prize when Paris was chosen for 2024.
In 1932, LA hosted its first Olympics. The city was the only bidder for the games at a time marked by the Great Depression and the absence of several nations. Even so, memorable sporting moments came from athletes like American athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who won gold medals in the new women’s javelin and hurdles events.
Financial and cultural success gave 1984 a reputation for “good” Olympics”, which made seemingly every major city in the world want theirs.
Emphasizing both the modern and the classic with a Hollywood twist, the games began with decathlon champion Rafer Johnson lighting the torch, a guy in a jetpack descending into Memorial Coliseum and theme music from the “Star Wars” maestro. John Williams.
With the Eastern Bloc countries boycotting, the US dominated. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton are among the athletes who became household names. A young Michael Jordan led the men’s basketball team to gold.
The games renewed, for some time, the global reputation of a city that was considered in decline.
“We want our games to be modern, young games, full of the optimism that Southern California brings to the world and the globe,” said Janet Evans, four-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming and athletic director for the LA 2028 organizing committee. , told the Associated Press in Paris.
Bass, who returns to Los Angeles on Monday, spent these games in Paris alongside organizers and city officials, learning what it takes to host the biggest sporting event in the world.
She was joined by LA28 President Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive, and Los Angeles Councilman Traci Park, chair of the city’s Olympic committee.
“As we saw here in Paris, the Olympics are an opportunity to make transformative change,” Bass said at a press conference before the closing ceremony.
Amid a boom in stadiums and arenas, Los Angeles will polish existing structures rather than erect new ones.
“These are games without construction,” Evans said.
After Groundbreaking Paris Opening Ceremony on the River Seine, LA plans to open with a traditional stadium-based approach at SoFi Stadium in nearby Inglewood, which also incorporates the century-old Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles.
Home to two NFL teams, SoFi has hosted a Super Bowl and several Taylor Swift concerts since opening in 2020. It will be what organizers say will be the largest Olympic swimming facility always. Its role in the opening ceremony means swimming will come after athletics for the first time since 1972.
Intuit Dome, the soon-to-open home of the NBA’s Clippers in Inglewood, would be the games’ newest major venue and is the planned venue for Olympic basketball. The Crypto.com Arena in the Lakers’ center will host gymnastics.
The toxicity of swimming in the Seine has become a serious problem in Paris. That could put renewed focus on the Long Beach area’s waterfront as it hosts marathon swims and triathlon races. Its cleanup record is mixed, but ocean waters earned consistently high marks in a 2023 analysis by the nonprofit Heal the Bay.
The coast of Long Beach was home to the pre-recorded performances during Sunday’s ceremony of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, although it would be easy to confuse with Venice Beach in Los Angeles, where the flag journey begun by Cruise was shown ending moments earlier.
A city that is notoriously difficult to get through may seem odd for the Olympics, but it could work.
Bass said he plans to emulate the tactics of Tom Bradley, the mayor in 1984, whose traffic mitigation measures have caused some to claim they were better than in non-Olympic times. They include asking local businesses to stagger working hours to reduce the number of cars on the roads and allowing working from home during the 17-day games.
Holding the Olympics under then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017 gave the city an unusually long planning time.
Although not a Paris metro, Los Angeles has built a metro since the last Olympics, with lines passing through major sites.
In 2018, the city planned an ambitious set of 28 bus and train projects to transform public transport. Some were dismantled, but others moved forward, including the extension of a subway line to connect downtown Los Angeles with UCLA, the planned home of the Olympic Village.
Another notable project is the Inglewood People Mover, a three-stop automated rail line that passes through the main Olympic venues. It initially received a commitment of $1 billion in federal funding, but opposition from Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters led to a $200 million reduction, according to the Los Angeles Times. reported. It is unclear whether the line will be completed by 2028.
Metro recently received $900 million in funding through a package of infrastructure spending and grants from the Biden administration, $139 million of which will go directly toward improving transportation by 2028 and toward the goal of a “car-free” Olympics. .
“The biggest challenge is not waiting until 2028, but rather seizing the opportunity between now and 2028 to help Angelenos and visitors alike reimagine the transportation network as something that will be their first choice,” said Stephanie Wiggins, CEO of Subway.
Although crime rates were considerably higher in 1984 than they are today, the countdown to 2028 comes at a time when the issue has received greater attention and cast a shadow amplified by social media.
The Olympics are designated as a national special security event, which makes the U.S. Secret Service the lead agency charged with developing a security plan, supported by significant federal resources.
Los Angeles city and county officials have sent law enforcement officers to Paris to observe, learn and help as they prepare for their own 2028 games.
There are many more encampments on city streets than there were in 1984, and it is unlikely that Los Angeles will have solved its homelessness crisis in the next four years. When the Paris games were over, California Governor Gavin Newsom threatened to withhold funding of cities unable to clear encampments.
Before the Paris Games, organizers relocated thousands of homeless peoplepractice also used to Rio de Janeiro Games 2016 and criticized by activists as “social cleansing”.
LA is the “next logical destination” for the Olympics, said Adam Burke, president and CEO of the LA Convention and Tourism Board. “LA has truly emerged as one of the sports capitals of the world.”
First, however, the city will host a FIFA World Cup event and US Women’s Open in 2026 and another Super Bowl in 2027.
The city’s hotel industry has continued to grow, adding 9,000 new hotel rooms over the past four years, with more to come over the next four.
LA28 organizers are banking on ticket sales, sponsorships, payments from the International Olympic Committee and other sources of revenue to cover the games’ $6.9 billion budget. The committee raised just over $1 billion toward a goal of $2.5 billion in national corporate sponsorships.
___
Associated Press writer Noreen Nassir contributed from Paris.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
