Tuesday, August 11, 2015

LA to the Rescue

Well, it only took a few weeks after the embarrassment of the Boston bid for the USOC to get its act together and find a new bid city for the 2024 Olympics.  It looks like they're close to officially announcing that Los Angeles will step in as the American bidder.  During the initial domestic race, in which LA finished second to Boston, many experts said LA should win and were surprised when Boston was chosen.  Then, after Boston fell apart, the USOC was in the unenviable position of putting together another bid at the 11th hour.  LA seemed like the only logical place that would work on short notice.  Fortunately, they were up for the challenge.

If the U.S. hadn't bid at all after the Boston debacle, the IOC would NOT have been very happy.  Thomas Bach made that abundantly clear during the 2022 vote in Kuala Lumpur.  So, the USOC had no choice but to put forth a replacement bid.  And it just so happens that the replacement bid is going to be a much better one than the original choice.

Many feel it's the U.S.'s "turn" to host an Olympics, but with Toronto likely entering a race that already includes three very strong bids from Europe (which won't have hosted the Games in 12 years), there's no guarantee.  But LA stands a much better chance than Boston ever would have.  And if the U.S. hadn't bid at all, it would've been even worse than New York and Chicago's losses for 2012 and 2016.

For all the problems Boston had with public and governmental support, LA has none of that.  Mayor Eric Garcetti has already agreed to cover any cost overruns, but predicts there won't be any.  Depending on who you ask, public support in Southern California is somewhere around 70 percent.  LA prides itself on being "America's Olympic City" and claims it could host the Olympics tomorrow if asked (the scary thing is they probably could).  Need an example supporting this?  How about the Special Olympics World Games, which just concluded in LA and were a rousing success?

Back in January when the USOC was down to its four finalists, I supported San Francisco over LA because I didn't think it was fair for LA to host three times when so many other American cities have never gotten the chance to host the Olympics.  Eight months later, I've changed my stance.  The three time thing isn't an issue for the IOC.  London 2012 was spectacular, and two-time host Paris is one of the other contenders for 2024.  Besides, LA is the ones that stepped up to the plate when Boston balked.  That shows me how important it is to them and how much they want to host the Olympics again.  San Francisco and Washington kind of just moved on after Boston was selected initially.

LA's proposed budget is only $4.5 billion.  Why so low?  Because all of the necessary infrastructure is already in place.  No need to build roads or train lines or venues that will see little-to-no post-Games use.  And maybe you've heard of this place called LAX?

In addition, how many world-class athletic venues have been built in LA in the last 10 years?  There's likely going to be more soon, too.  If Roger Goodell gets his way, LA will have two NFL teams, both with brand new stadiums, within the next five years.  And USC has already committed I think $70 million to renovating the Coliseum.  They're also proposing a new soccer stadium next to the Coliseum for the new team that's supposedly replacing Chivas USA in MLS.  They'd maybe need to build a swimming stadium and an athletes' village, but that's about it.

One of the most brilliant things the organizers of the 1984 Olympics did was make use of existing facilities, which were scattered all around Southern California.  That model fits perfectly into the IOC's Agenda 2020.  And you know that we'll see most, if not all, of those facilities again, as well as all of the new ones (basketball at Staples Center, volleyball at USC's Galen Center).  If they wanted to, they could even hold the entire soccer tournament entirely in the greater LA area (finals at the Rose Bowl, Home Depot Center, new MLS stadium, one of the new football stadiums, UCLA's Drake Stadium, maybe a stadium in Anaheim).

It's not a stretch to say that Los Angeles saved the Olympic Movement in 1984.  After the Munich Massacre, Montreal going bankrupt and the Moscow boycott, nobody wanted to host (LA ran unopposed), thinking the benefits didn't outweigh the risks/costs.  LA changed that.  They were a glorious Games that revived the Olympic Spirit.  Beyond that, they made money!  With corporate sponsorships and the use of existing venues, they set the model that other Olympic cities would follow for the next 30 years.

The IOC is not in the same dire straits it was 30 years ago.  They were stuck with Beijing vs. Almaty for 2022 because the other cities were scared off by Sochi's $51 billion price tag, which is an incredibly misleading number, and the Athens Games are at least part of the reason for Greece's financial situation.  Then there are the organizational problems with Rio and Japan's constant changing of its Olympic Stadium plans.  But there's no doubt that the IOC and the Olympics will survive, which was not the case back then.

Likewise, the USOC would've survived if LA hadn't stepped up to bid for the 2024 Games.  But it would've done some massive damage to the USOC's relationship with the IOC, which it took years to rebuild.  So, once again, it really is LA to to rescue.  We're still two years away from finding out where the 2024 Olympics will be.  But we know the U.S. will at least be in the running when the winner is named.  Thanks to Los Angeles.

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