Sustainability? Legacy? LA 1984 revisited

No one likes I-told-you-so’s, and if there is a good lord up above, he — or she — knows full well that others find it tiresome, indeed, to hear Americans boasting about anything. So this is not — repeat, not — that column. There’s no point. At the same time, it’s just plain dumb to ignore reality. So, now, with International Olympic Committee extolling a renewed commitment to “sustainability” and “legacy,” and with the true believers this week celebrating the 30th anniversary of the 1984 Games that changed everything, it’s entirely reasonable to look anew at those Los Angeles Olympics. Because they didn’t just save the modern Olympic movement — they set the standard for sustainability and legacy, too.

Also this: if in more recent Olympic bid campaigns, U.S. efforts have gotten knocked down in part because American cities are different — the whole notion of 50 states means the federal government itself won’t underwrite a bid the way national governments in other countries will — it’s only fair now to note for the record that the LA Games, while often touted as privately run, absolutely included significant public monies.

It’s easy, perhaps even understandable, for others elsewhere to want to beat up on the United States, the world’s only superpower.

However, when it comes to the Olympics, and issues of sustainability, legacy and public-private partnership, the question — as the historical record proves without a shadow of a doubt — is, why the knock on the USA?

You’d think the American way would be celebrated as a model.

The planning that went into the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, for instance, was always meant to transform the U.S. into a winter-sports nation — with major universities in and around town and world-class venues just up Interstate 80 in Park City, Deer Valley and a few minutes beyond in Soldier Hollow. The proof has come in the medals count in Vancouver and Sochi.

If in Olympic circles no one much likes to talk loudly about Atlanta — the main Olympic Stadium, when all is said and done in two years, will have served as the home for the baseball Braves for nearly 20 years. There's a legitimate argument about whether 20 years is enough -- but compare 20 years of day-in, day-out baseball to, for instance, the Bird's Nest in Beijing or the Olympic Stadium in Athens.

And then, of course, there is Los Angeles — where on Monday evening, at the LA84 Foundation grounds, they held a low-key party to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the opening ceremony.

Just as he did on July 28, 1984, Rafer Johnson carried the torch. This time, though, it wasn’t up the steeply angled staircase that had been built at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was only a few easy, level steps.

“Tonight was fantastic,” Johnson said as he posed for photos with Peter Ueberroth, who oversaw those 1984 Games. “No stairs.”

The gymnast Mary Lou Retton was on hand. The hurdler Edwin Moses. Dozens more athletes from 1984. Anita DeFrantz, the senior IOC member to the United States and the foundation president, herself a bronze medalist from the 1976 Montreal Games.

Even Sammy Lee, the gold medal-winning diver from 1948 and 1952.

It was a celebration — and there was, upon reflection, much to celebrate.

The foundation was created with 40 percent of the $232.5 million 1984 surplus.

Since 1985, the foundation has invested $220 million into Southern California youth sports. This includes $103.3 million in direct grants, plus spending on foundation-initiated youth sports programs, coaching education, research projects, youth sports conferences.

The foundation has developed a major sports library and digital collection, and has published reports on, among other topics, the prevention of ACL injuries, the educational benefits of youth sports, increasing Latina sports participation and tackling in youth football.

The foundation’s grants have served three million young people (under age 17). Some 1,100 organizations have received grants. About 80,000 youth sports coaches have been trained.

Simply put, is there another institution in the world, anywhere, that has done anything like the LA84 Foundation?

Remarkably, it has done even more — its definition of “legacy” incredibly expansive.

LA84 has made over $20 million in infrastructure grants. That investment, in turn, has leveraged another $100 million from other funders. That money has meant nearly 100 facilities have been refurbished or built from the ground up.

Among the most notable projects: the John Argue Swim Stadium at Exposition Park across from the University of Southern California, in which the 1932 Olympic Swim Stadium was refurbished, and the construction of the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, California.

LA84 has an ongoing partnership with the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation. To date, 30 baseball fields have been built.

That $232.5 million figure has long been a source of fascination, if not more.

In 1978, Los Angeles voters, by a wide margin, voted against public funding for the Games. And as the official report of the 1984 Games notes, the federal government turned down a $200 million grant request from the LA84 organizing committee in the "early" planning stages.

Even so, there absolutely was public spending on the Games.

For instance:

-- The federal government spent $30 to $35 million for security; other federal agencies projected another $38 million in spending, which was accounted for through additional appropriations or by reduced spending in non-Olympic areas. The LA84 organizing committee budgets do not account for these federal funds.

-- The state of California would claim $14.3 million in unreimbursed Olympic costs but only $3.6 million represented a special appropriation.

-- The organizing committee paid for policing in Los Angeles and other Southern California cities.

Overall, the $232.5 million surplus is, as it should be, strictly a reflection of the organizing committee's budget. Even so, if you were to figure in federal, state and local spending, there's still no question the organizing committee would have finished the 1984 Olympics way into the black.

Finally, this:

On November 1, 1984, the LA Times published a story whose headline declared, “Giant Olympic Surplus Spills Over Into Anger.” At that point, the surplus was being estimated at perhaps $150 million — the $232.5 million figure would not yet be known — and the city attorney in Fullerton, California, was bemoaning the money it had paid out to hold the Olympic team handball events at the Cal State campus there.

It would be a fascinating measure of legacy, indeed, to weigh the costs to taxpayers in or before 1984 against LA84 Foundation grants to public entities in the 30 years since.

Sochi at the halfway point and a 'New Russia'

SOCHI, Russia -- It should have taken maybe 15 minutes to make it Monday morning from our hotel near the central business district out to the airport. It took two hours. Of course, that was leaving the hotel on the 10 o'clock bus, which actually left way closer to 10:45 a.m., but why quibble over such details? Especially, as it was later related by other friends, when it took four hours to get to the airport on the 11 o'clock bus.

It's not as if there was some catastrophic accident that had blocked the roads, either. Just some rain and a whole bunch of cars going nowhere fast. Asking why it took two hours, or four -- there's no answer.

"It's normal in Russia," a Russian friend who was also on the 10 o'clock bus said of our two-hour crawl. She shrugged her shoulders.

Of all the things that get said and written about Sochi in the next few years, leading up to the 2014 Winter Olympics, there's this: See those 2014 Games as catalyst for a new normal in modern Russia.

There are lots of ways to define "legacy," a word much used in Olympic circles. The way the Russians are defining it -- particularly since the entire project in Sochi is a start-up -- makes for a compelling study.

Russia is not going to be changed overnight because of the Olympics.

But Russia assuredly is going to be changed. Some of those changes are already clearly visible now -- not quite three and a half years since Sochi won the right to stage the 2014 Game, about three and a half years to go until the opening ceremony. Some are more subtle and may take at least a generation to realize.

The visible change is easy: all the construction in and around Sochi, the seaside Olympic Park for the ice sports and the snow sports cluster in the mountains at what's called Krasna Polyana, about 35 miles away.

At the figure skating and short-track speed skating building, they've already screwed in 500 tons of bolts. The top row of beams is being hoisted up into place now.

A few steps away, at the larger of the two ice hockey buildings, they've poured nearly 110,000 cubic yards of concrete.

All in, estimates are that it will take $6 billion to build all the Olympic infrastructure -- and that's only about a quarter of the sum being poured into developing the region by 2014, as the official Russian news agency Tass reported Wednesday. If the Beijing 2008 experience is any example, such enormous figures will ultimately prove low-ball estimates.

Sochi is a Black Sea resort with hundreds of what the Russians call "sanitoriums" and Americans might call "spas." It's a well-established summer fun spot. The 2014 game plan is to make it a winter destination as well.

This isn't Greece in the run-up to the 2004 Summer Games in Athens or, for that matter, India in the lead-up to this month's Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. They're emphatic in Sochi that the buildings will get built on schedule -- everything in the Olympic Park in 2012 but for the central stadium, and that in 2013.

"I'm not afraid to show you anything," said Murat Akhmadiev, a supervising engineer for Olimpstroy, the government agency overseeing building at Olympic Park, said during a walk-around a few days ago.

Vladimir Putin himself made a little tour on Wednesday. Knowing that he was coming by to scrutinize your work -- that's what you might call motivation.

Clearly, there's a sense of urgency among the construction crews working 24/7 at Olympic Park. At the same time, there's an undeniable sense of confidence, too -- reflected in the six-month-old stray puppy that crews have adopted as the site mascot.

His name is Tzosik -- a Russian diminutive for "Tzentralnyi Stadion,"  Central Stadium.

In wrapping up its visit this week to Sochi, it was little surprise to hear the IOC's inspection team -- the so-called coordination commission -- prove upbeat, commission chair Jean-Claude Killy saying at a news conference Thursday, "Every time we meet with President [Dmitry] Medvedev or Prime Minister Putin, we have a complete sense that this project is Priority No. 1 nationally."

Will the traffic be way, way better by 2014? Undoubtedly.

Will there be other and unforeseeable challenges to come? Plainly.

Will mistakes be made? Yes. Nothing is perfect.

Is Sochi one of the more interesting experiments in Olympic history? Sure, in the manner of Beijing two years ago and Rio in 2016. Which is why the International Olympic Committee keeps going to such places.

The Olympic Games, though, are not fairy dust. They don't magically solve problems. As a catalyst for discrete change, though -- the trick is to think big but recognize that sometimes big change just takes time. That's a hugely sophisticated take on legacy. That's what's on display in Sochi.

In Russia, right now you can't recycle the plastic bottles that are seemingly everywhere. They're working now on that -- because of 2014.

For the first time, 2014 again the spark, they're trying to figure out how to identify -- and recruit -- as many as 30 million people nationwide for the sorts of volunteer projects that are common in the United States. That's one in five people.

"Can you imagine the scale of under-delivered services that could be provided?" asked Dmitry Chernyshenko, the chief of the Sochi 2014 organizing committee.

This is a country where an estimated 13 million people, just under 10 percent of the population, daily confronts physical disabilities.

All that concrete that has been poured at the ice hockey arena? Some of that went into ramps to get up and down.The ramps are the sort that evoke, say, Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Nothing out of the ordinary here in the United States. In Russia -- that's a shining example.

"Russia is a rather new democracy," Chernyshenko said in an interview. "It's just less than 19 years old." He laughed, then said, "It's like my older daughter," who is 19. "This," the father said, "is the best way to describe what the 'New Russia' means. When you are 19 years old, when you've got great potential but you've [also] got a great history -- it's very natural to become very active and be recognized as a member of world society.

"First of all," he said, "the New Russia should be an equal member of the world society. I know our state leaders are doing a lot for Russia to become that."

And, he said, "We will help them."