LA 28

Here we go: back to LA, the one place a Summer Olympics should always be in the United States

Here we go: back to LA, the one place a Summer Olympics should always be in the United States

News alert: the Games famously were in LA in 1932 and 1984 and will be back in 2028. If you think Paris was the best ever, and it’s right up there with London, with the proviso that all Games have backstage glitches, and on TV you lived none of that, none of the Olympic Village food drama, the COVID cases or, anywhere, the signage that would send you on trips to nowhere — LA formally now has next.

To be clear, the bar is set high, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach calling these Games, which came Sunday to a close, a “love story.”

LA28 new CEO: former three-star general a 'people person' who 'gets [stuff] done'

LA28 new CEO: former three-star general a 'people person' who 'gets [stuff] done'

Reynold Hoover is four weeks into his new gig, chief executive officer at LA28.

Hoover, 63, comes to the job after an incredible career, mostly in the military, that saw him earn the rank of lieutenant general. That’s three stars.

Skeptics: do we really need a former three-star general militarizing the Olympic Games? In, of all places, Los Angeles?

 “I’m not going to try to militarize the organization or the Olympics,” Hoover said Wednesday in his first interview since taking over at LA28. “That’s the wrong way to go.

Casey Wasserman at the IOC and unequivocally in solidarity with Israel

Casey Wasserman at the IOC and unequivocally in solidarity with Israel

MUMBAI — Presenting Monday to the International Olympic Committee at its 141st assembly, Casey Wasserman, chair of the LA28 organizing committee, said, “I unequivocally stand in solidarity with Israel.

“But let me be clear. I also stand with the innocent civilians in Gaza who did not choose this war.”

Wasserman’s remarks marked part of a stirring one-two combo in which he and former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, now the U.S. ambassador to India, served noticed that sports and politics assuredly do mix.

Taylor Swift has what the Olympics needs. These five sports for LA28 are not it

Taylor Swift has what the Olympics needs. These five sports for LA28 are not it

MUMBAI – Squash? Really? That’s part of a purportedly cool plan to draw in tweens, teens and 20-somethings? Weed is legal in California, no problem out of competition, thank you doping control, but that is the idea? Seriously? Squash?

I teach college students at the University of Southern California, a key piece of the International Olympic Committee’s target audience. When the discussion came up this week in class about the five new sports the Los Angeles 2028 said it was proposing, squash, yay, and four others, a package the IOC executive board ratified here Friday for confirmation by its assembly in a few days, one of my students who consistently sees right through institutional BS called it the way it is:

“What,” he said, “is squash?”

Concerned about water sports at LA28? Fear not, for to the left: the Pacific Ocean

Concerned about water sports at LA28? Fear not, for to the left: the Pacific Ocean

The life cycle of an Olympic organizing committee is utterly predictable. Here in SoCal, it’s five-plus years to go until the opening ceremony in July 2028. Thus came the tone and tenor of the inane question directed at a Thursday news conference at LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman, which carried the grievance-laced, fix-this-now hallmark that attends these sorts of queries at this point, Olympics organizers somehow expected to fix every problem under the sun when the job description is delivering a Games on time and under budget.

In a startling fit of obviousness, a local NPR reporter noted that Los Angeles has a homelessness problem. He asked: “So what’s your response right now?” Then, after some remarks from the head table, this follow-up: “Are you prepared to put policies on the table or to put remedies on the table …”

Is an Olympic organizing committee a government entity? No. Is the city of Los Angeles, the county of Los Angeles, the state of California — are all these entities wrestling with the maddening complexities of this issue? Yes. Has there been a long-running lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles over this exact matter worth literally billions of dollars? Yes.

And yet an Olympic organizing committee is supposed to wave the five rings in the air or something, and summon a magical fix? What next? Solve climate change? Cure cancer? Achieve a breakthrough in cold fusion?

in praise of a true Olympic and American hero and civil rights icon: Anita DeFrantz

in praise of a true Olympic and American hero and civil rights icon: Anita DeFrantz

About halfway through the first in-person news conference of the Los Angeles 2028 coordination commission, Casey Wasserman, head of the LA28 organizing committee, put a pause on Thursday’s proceedings. Someone special had unassumingly taken a seat at the back of the room.

“Anita DeFrantz just walked in,” Wasserman said from the head table. “I would say that none of us would be here without Anita DeFrantz. Someone I’ve known longer than both of us would like to admit. A true inspiration.

“Not only an Olympic hero,” a 1976 bronze medalist in rowing, “but a true American icon for civil rights and the Olympic movement and if you had any doubt that she’s tougher than all of us,” the last few months having seen DeFrantz battling cancer, “she is.

“And we love her. And we look forward,” now Wasserman looking directly at DeFrantz, “to being with you at opening ceremony in 2028. So thank you for being here.”

The real story: a billion-dollar surplus

The real story: a billion-dollar surplus

he Los Angeles 2028 organizing committee on Tuesday released an inflation-adjusted budget, and in the rush to pounce on the new number, $6.9 billion, every single outlet missed the story.

The story is this, and it’s all there in black and white, though my colleagues in the press either don’t want to embrace it or simply can’t believe it, almost surely because they have been so thoroughly accustomed to Olympic finance horror stories: the fundamental truth is that Los Angeles and California are different, and so in 2028, as in 1984, LA will be the Games changer, meaning absent an act of God like an earthquake that turns abruptly turns Las Vegas into beachfront resort, LA28 is going to clear an absurd amount of money.

Like, an anticipated surplus of a billion dollars. 

On a budget of $6.9 billion. 

There is a place for caution and tempered expectation and all of that.

There is also reality. 

Reimagining Olympic legacy

Reimagining Olympic legacy

Time flies. It was September 2017 when the International Olympic Committee made the dual award of the 2024 Games to Paris and the 2028 Games to Los Angeles.

In essence — nearly 11 years ’til the Olympics came back to LA, in July 2028.

Last week, it was exactly 2024 days until the start of the 2024 Games in Paris. A typical Olympic countdown clock ticks down from roughly seven years. The year marker for Paris is already at five.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, 11 years has turned to nine-plus. Of course nine-plus is a long time. But look how many months have already passed so quickly.

Unlike every other Games in modern Olympic history — the LA 84 Games the exception and thus the model, turning a $232.5 million surplus — LA28 offers a chance to do it differently, differently in this case meaning better, because in LA everything is built, meaning the LA 28 organizing committee has the extraordinary opportunity from the get-to to focus on what the Games ought to stand for and be about.

LA28 does not have to wait until after a Games for new buildings built as part of an Olympic-related infrastructure boom to secure a legacy.

Instead, it can and should use the Olympics — because there is no construction need — to redefine, indeed reimagine, legacy.

'Like, my parents are already saying they want to buy tickets!'

'Like, my parents are already saying they want to buy tickets!'

In blue shading to purple, the big sign to the left of the cauldron read, “The Games are Back.” To the right, purple back to blue, “LA 2028.”

With International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach, LA mayor Eric Garcetti and LA 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman looking on, Rafer Johnson — the Rome 1960 decathlon champion who so memorably lit the cauldron at the 1984 Games — lit the cauldron again.

The Games are back.

Paris will stage the 2024 Games and Los Angeles 2028. Last Wednesday, at an assembly in Lima, Peru, the IOC ratified this historic double allocation.

In keeping with the approach that brought the Summer Games back to the United States for the first time in a generation, since Atlanta in 1996, Sunday’s moments at the Coliseum were — yet again — low-key and marked not by any of the excess, entitlement or pompsity too often associated with the Olympic scene but by a genuine display of what the Olympics is supposed to be about:

Friendship, excellence and respect.

Plus, most of all, and this cannot be stressed enough, especially from and for Americans, and from and for Americans especially now: humility.