2024 Bid Cities

LA for 28, Paris for 24: how it came to be

LA for 28, Paris for 24: how it came to be

For weeks now, Olympic insiders have known that Paris would get the 2024 Games and Los Angeles 2028. On Monday, it happened.

Simply put, there was too much win-win-win at stake.

This phraseology is how the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, had come recently to term the 2024/2028 double — as a triple play, really, a win for the IOC, for Paris and for LA.

The full IOC membership must ratify this arrangement at an assembly September 13 in Lima, Peru. That will be a formality.

Of course, in 2017 we don’t know whether by summer 2028 that triple play will have come true. As ever, time will be the measure of all things.

Nevertheless, the IOC persists

Nevertheless, the IOC persists

BUDAPEST — Amid the rocking splendor of the 2017 FINA swimming championships, there are three parallel threads that dominate conversations at the Duna Arena and the riverfront hotels where Olympic, swim and other international sports personalities have clustered.

Isn’t Budapest awesome? (Yes.)

Isn’t Katie Ledecky awesome? (Yes.)

Why is the International Olympic Committee seemingly so set on giving the 2024 Summer Games to Paris and 2028 to Los Angeles?

Aha.

To be clear, the 2024/28 arrangement is not — yet — a done deal. Nothing in life is certain until it is, and as is widely known by now, the IOC has given itself until its next general assembly, September 13, in Lima, Peru, to finalize the double allocation.

Budapest's Olympic dream: maybe someday

Budapest's Olympic dream: maybe someday

BUDAPEST — This is from someone who lives in Los Angeles: it is a pity that Budapest dropped out of the race for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Democracy is what it is. The will of the people is what it will be.

But if these first few days of the 2017 FINA world championships are any indication, and they are, Budapest would make a great stage for a Summer Olympics.

“First of all, well done, Hungary,” the Australian national swim team coach Jacco Verhaeren said at an opening news conference.

LA or Paris? The strategic play? Or emotional?

LA or Paris? The strategic play? Or emotional?

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — In a Samaranch-style bit of kabuki theater, the decision itself having been ordained long ago, the full membership of the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved the double allocation of the 2024 and 2028 Summer Games to the last two cities standing in the campaign, Los Angeles and Paris.

In theory, the IOC will announce whether it’s LA first and Paris next, or vice-versa, at another all-members assembly in Lima, Peru, on September 13. In reality, this decision has been ordained as well. Paris almost surely will get 2024, LA 2028. This deal will be done in just weeks, maybe even before the calendar turns to August, and if you have noted that U.S. President Donald Trump has accepted French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to visit France on Bastille Day, July 14, well, maybe that is some strategic thinking there.

A tale of two not-the-same cities

A tale of two not-the-same cities

You know that feeling you have in the morning when you wake up and, groggy, you’re fumbling in the darkness, and you grab a pair of socks from your drawer, and you think — you think — you have a pair that matches but you’re not sure because one might be navy blue and one might be black?

Like, you are pretty sure they’re the same but, hmm? You turn on the iPhone light. Whatever. Close enough.

You rush out of the house. Later, in the light of day, it’s super-obvious: they’re not even remotely the same. One is blue. The other is black.

Los Angeles, Paris, Kigali and celebrating Olympism

Los Angeles, Paris, Kigali and celebrating Olympism

Before Rod Stewart got all weird, writing stuff like Da Ya Think I’m Sexy, or doing lovestruck Van Morrison covers, like Have I Told You Lately, he did some pretty cool songs, like 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story.

Don’t it?

The International Olympic Committee’s would-be reform plan, Agenda 2020, is purportedly all about less-is-more.

Now let's see if IOC can get 2024/2028 right

Now let's see if IOC can get 2024/2028 right

Last September, I became the very first person on Planet Earth to propose publicly that the International Olympic Committee award the 2024 and 2028 Summer Games at a single stroke. On Friday, the IOC’s policy-making executive board took me up on my suggestion.

Now let’s see, despite indications to the contrary, whether the IOC can get the order right.

At issue is way more than the 2024 and 2028 Games. At stake is the direction, if not the very future, of the Olympic movement in the 21st century.

How is Paris bid like The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

How is Paris bid like The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

PARIS — Taking in the sight of the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Tuesday hosting the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission along with the Paris 2024 bid team, you could almost hear the soundtrack playing from the 1975 cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

Let’s do the time warp again, people.

It’s like the Paris 2024 people think it’s 2005 and they are having a group therapy session over the loss to London for 2012 and re-playing the things their predecessors did wrong and trying, 12 years later, to make it right.

What did de Coubertin know for 2024?

What did de Coubertin know for 2024?

PARIS — Welcome, members of the International Olympic Committee evaluation commission and, incidentally, jackals of the press following behind at a respectful distance and, please, do keep it respectful. This is where it all began, on June 23, 1894, the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin proclaiming to a gathering of swells, “I … lift my glass to the Olympic idea, which has traversed the mists of the ages like an all-powerful ray of sunlight and returned to illumine the threshold of the 20th century with a gleam of joyous hope.”

Here we are in 2017, and the IOC has its backside in a bind. The baron, more than a century ago, could have predicted this very thing.

Who's got next, Mme. Hidalgo?

Who's got next, Mme. Hidalgo?

Dear Mme. Hidalgo:

In American pick-up basketball, we have an expression: who’s got next?

On Sunday, Emmanuel Macron took office as French president. Surely in recent days you noticed how M. Macron was out front in expressing support to the International Olympic Committee for the Paris 2024 project. Just guessing here since you and he have had what might be described as a frosty relationship: you must have been thinking to yourself — dude, really?