Tom Cruise greets Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass throughout the 2024 Summer season Olympics closing ceremony on the Stade de France, Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France. (AP Picture/Natacha Pisarenko)
LOS ANGELES — It’s Los Angeles’ flip for the torch. Mayor Karen Bass accepted the Olympic flag on the Paris closing ceremony Sunday, earlier than handing it off to a key consultant of LA’s native enterprise — Tom Cruise — who in a pre-recorded trek by way of motorbike, airplane and parachute kicked off the countdown to 2028.
Town will turn into the third on the earth to host the video games thrice because it provides to the storied years of 1932 and 1984. Right here’s a glance ahead and again in time on the Olympics in LA.
LA’s Olympic trilogy
Los Angeles acquired the 2028 video games as a comfort prize when Paris was picked for 2024.
Again in 1932, LA hosted its first Olympics. Town was the one bidder for the video games at a time marred by the Nice Melancholy and the absence of a number of nations. But memorable sport moments got here from athletes together with American athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who gained golds within the new ladies’s occasions of javelin and hurdles.
Monetary and cultural success gave 1984 a popularity because the “good” Olympics” which made seemingly each main world metropolis need their very own.
READ: Los Angeles 2028 brings new, returning sports activities plus recent look
Emphasizing each the trendy and the classical with a hand from Hollywood, the video games opened with decathlon champion Rafer Johnson lighting the torch, a man in a jetpack descending into the Memorial Coliseum and theme music by “Star Wars” maestro John Williams.
With Jap Bloc nations boycotting, the U.S. dominated. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton are among the many athletes who turned family names. A younger Michael Jordan led the boys’s basketball workforce to gold.
The video games renewed, for some time, the worldwide popularity of a metropolis that had been perceived to be in decline.
“We would like our video games to be a contemporary video games, youthful, filled with the optimism that Southern California brings to the world and the globe,” Janet Evans, four-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming and chief athlete officer for the LA 2028 organizing committee, instructed The Related Press in Paris.
Passing the torch
Bass, who arrives again in LA Monday, spent these video games in Paris together with organizers and metropolis officers, studying what it takes to host the world’s largest sporting occasion.
Becoming a member of her have been LA28 Chairperson Casey Wasserman, an leisure government, and LA council member Traci Park, chair of the town Olympic committee.
“As we’ve seen right here in Paris, the Olympics are a possibility to make transformative change,” Bass stated at a press convention forward of the closing ceremony.
READ: Paris closes out 2024 Olympics with closing star-studded present
Venues previous and new, plus a swimming stadium
Amid a stadium-and-arena growth, LA will polish current constructions quite than erect new ones.
“It’s a no-build video games,” Evans stated.
After Paris’ modern opening ceremony on the Seine River, LA plans to open with a conventional, stadium-based strategy at SoFi Stadium in neighboring Inglewood that additionally incorporates the century-old Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles itself.
House to 2 NFL groups, SoFi has hosted a Tremendous Bowl and several other Taylor Swift concert events since opening in 2020. It is going to turn into what organizers say is the biggest Olympic swimming venue ever. Its opening ceremony position means swimming will come after observe and subject for the primary time since 1972.
Intuit Dome, the soon-to-open Inglewood dwelling of the NBA’s Clippers, can be the video games’ latest main venue and is the deliberate dwelling for Olympic basketball. The Lakers’ downtown Crypto.com Area will host gymnastics.
The toxicity of swimming within the Seine turned a severe concern in Paris. That would put renewed deal with the Lengthy Seashore space waterfront when it hosts marathon swimming and triathlon races. Its cleanliness historical past is blended however its ocean waters acquired constantly excessive marks in a 2023 evaluation by nonprofit Heal the Bay.
The Lengthy Seashore shore was dwelling to the pre-recorded performances throughout Sunday’s ceremony of the Purple Sizzling Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, although it was straightforward to mistake for LA’s Venice Seashore, the place the journey of the flag begun by Cruise was proven ending moments earlier.
Trains, buses and site visitors
A metropolis that’s notoriously arduous to traverse might seem to be an odd match for the Olympics, however it could work.
Bass stated she plans to emulate the techniques of Tom Bradley, the mayor in 1984, whose site visitors mitigations had some saying it was higher than at non-Olympic instances. They embrace asking native companies to stagger workforce hours to scale back the variety of vehicles on the highway and permit make money working from home throughout the 17-day video games.
Touchdown the Olympics underneath then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017 gave the town an unusually lengthy lead time for planning.
READ: LA 2028 plans ‘no automotive’ Olympics to beat gridlock
Whereas it’s no Paris Metro, LA has constructed a subway since its final Olympics, with strains operating previous main venues.
In 2018, the town deliberate an bold slate of 28 bus and rail initiatives to remodel public transit. Some have been scrapped however others moved ahead, together with the extension of a subway line to attach downtown Los Angeles with UCLA, the deliberate dwelling of the Olympic Village.
One other high-profile undertaking is the Inglewood Folks Mover, an automatic, three-stop rail line previous main Olympic venues. It initially acquired a dedication of $1 billion in federal funding, however opposition from Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters led to a $200 million discount, the Los Angeles Occasions reported. It’s unclear whether or not the road might be accomplished by 2028.
Metro not too long ago acquired $900 million in funding by means of an infrastructure spending package deal and grants from the Biden administration, of which $139 million will go straight towards enhancing transportation by 2028 and the aim of a “car-free” Olympics.
“The most important problem will not be ready to 2028, however actually taking the chance between now and 2028 to assist Angelenos and guests alike reimagine the transportation community as one thing that might be their first selection,” Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins stated.
Crime, security and notion
Whereas crime charges have been significantly increased in 1984 than at the moment, the countdown to 2028 comes as the problem has gotten elevated consideration and forged a social-media-amplified shadow.
The Olympics are designated as a nationwide particular safety occasion, which makes the U.S. Secret Service the lead company tasked with growing a safety plan, supported by vital federal sources.
LA metropolis and county regulation enforcement despatched officers to Paris to look at, be taught and help as they put together for their very own 2028 video games.
There are various extra encampments on metropolis streets than there have been in 1984, and it’s unlikely LA could have solved its homeless disaster within the subsequent 4 years. Because the Paris video games ended, California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to withhold funding from cities unable to clear encampments.
Forward of the Video games in Paris, organizers relocated 1000’s of unhoused individuals, a follow additionally used for the 2016 Rio de Janiero Video games and criticized by activists as “social cleaning.”
Vacationers and funds
LA is the “subsequent logical vacation spot” for the Olympics, stated Adam Burke, president and CEO of the LA Tourism and Conference Board. “LA has emerged as actually one of many world’s sports activities capitals.”
First although, the town will host a FIFA World Cup occasion and U.S. Ladies’s Open in 2026 and one other Tremendous Bowl in 2027.
Town’s lodge business has continued to see progress, including 9,000 new lodge rooms previously 4 years with extra to come back over the following 4.
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LA28 organizers are banking on ticket gross sales, sponsorships, funds from the Worldwide Olympic Committee and different income streams to cowl the video games’ $6.9 billion price range. The committee has introduced in simply over $1 billion towards a aim of $2.5 billion in home company sponsorships.
