Olympics : Paris to host 2024, and L.A. to host 2028 after they reach deal.

[sunonmars]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2017/07/31/paris-set-host2024-olympics-los-angeles-2028-edition/

Paris is poised to host the 2024 Olympics and Los Angeles the 2028 edition after the American city was offered £1.3 billion to stage the latter event.

LA 2024 announced it had agreed to withdraw from the race for the earlier Games, having struck a deal that would see the International Olympic Committee pay it $1.8bn, which could eventually rise to more than $2bn.

The award of the 2024 and 2028 Olympics to Paris and LA respectively needs to be rubber-stamped at September’s IOC session in Lima, but that is now a formality.

[matt819]

1. Who. Cares?

The Olympic Games have run their course. Very few, if any, real amateurs. It's not about the athletes or the sport. It's about the money. Only. Cities that host the Games end up with white elephants. Doping. Corruption.

[Awsi Dooger]

4. Unbelievable...that sounds exactly like Trump

Taking all the low percentage variables and shamelessly pumping and pumping far beyond all semblance of truth, to promote fear and distrust.

I've attended several Olympiads, Summer and Winter. It is all about the athletes and the sports. Plus unity. Remarkable atmosphere and experience. I still have online friends from Spain who I met initially at Barcelona 1992.

Basically I feel sorry for anyone who shares the same conventional wisdom cynicism toward the Olympics that you do. It has been a pathetic theme on this site ever since I joined in 2002. Liberals aren't sharp about everything.

[matt819]

5. I had no idea what 45 thought about the Olympics

As for "pathetic theme," I've been here since 2001 and I had no idea that this was a theme, pathetic or not.

Guess I'm just not interested. Don't care much for professional or college sports either. There's a theme for you.

[StevieM]

14. I enjoy the Olympics. But there have been some cities that did not do very well

as a result of hosting them.

I think the bidding process for the 2022 Winter games was insane. By the end they were down to two choices that they didn't want.

This time around they were also down to two choices, but at least they were two choices that they wanted.

[Blue_true]

7. So.

You call kids like Lilly King, Simone Manuel and Katie Ledecky professionals? Shame on you, those are kids going to college and working their asses off to compete in class and their sport. If they were professionals, they would not be able to swim in college - which all of them do.

[Awsi Dooger]

2. Los Angeles didn't want to be viewed as loser of the 2024 vote

Gradually they had to realize the IOC voting members would prefer Paris for 2024. Instead of allowing this to proceed to a true vote with the inevitable outcome plastered all over the media and public consciousness, Los Angeles wisely conceded the point, even if it means accepting their second choice.

So now the 2024 vote will be a known formality, without consolation prize stigma for Los Angeles even if essentially that's what it is.

With potential for Trump to still be in office during summer 2024 the IOC voting members weren't going to risk Los Angeles for that Olympiad.

[Expecting Rain]

3. I care.

The 1984 games here in Los Angles were a huge success. No white elephants.

And I spent the day at a Water Polo tournament where most of the participants (including my son) had a summer of daily practices and weekend games paid for by an athletic scolarship program that is still funding activities for our city's youth after all these decades.

[Awsi Dooger]

6. I was there...the 1984 Games were awesome

I had recently graduated from USC so it was a treat watching Olympic activities all over my stomping grounds campus. My off campus apartments called Troy Hall were used as dorms. But they had huge temporary fences around them for security.

Every night at center USC campus in what we called the Commons cafeteria there were gatherings from across the globe, watching replays of the day's events hour after hour amidst partying and celebration. Amazing fun. I met so many foreigners and we worked out the language barrier every time. I ended up going there almost every night even if it meant exhaustion to begin the next day.

That's what the cynics never see. No, those petrified cynical types are like the PGA golfers who fearfully stayed away from Rio last summer, fixated on Zika alone.

I wish I could have set the betting lines on that one. The cynical morons actually believed that Zika would emerge from those Games as a major variable over 16 days. Unbelievable.

Let's see, in 1984 I would park at Carl's Jr. every day not far east of the USC campus. I'd buy some food and leave the wrappers visibly in the car so I wouldn't be towed, even if the car was there for 12 hours or more. Worked every time. On the final full day of track and field I was seated three seats away from boxing promoter Don King, who smiled incessantly while waving a little American flag.

Highlight of that day was Sebastian Coe repeating as 1500 meter champion and then looking up defiantly while gesturing at the British press in the press box, after they had prematurely written him off.

Coe is now the head of international track and field.

[hunter]

9. Yep, I was there too.

I loved watching how all the temporary stuff was built to look good on television, not to last. They seem to have had a lot of Hollywood talent doing it fast and doing it cheap; plywood, foam, plaster, and Bondo, having no real worries that any of it it would melt in the rain because it doesn't rain in Los Angeles in the summer. And it did look good on television. After the Olympics a few feeble efforts were made to sell some of the set pieces, but most of it was so flimsy it went straight to the dumpsters.

Otherwise Los Angeles used a lot of existing infrastructure far and wide, just as the movie industry does. There was no single Olympic Village, athletes were housed in various University dorms that would have otherwise been vacant during the summer break.

Most remarkably the predicted freeway traffic Armageddon didn't happen. People who didn't absolutely have to be in Los Angeles avoided Los Angeles, and many businesses voluntarily rescheduled around expected bottlenecks.

Ah, water polo... that's so cool! Captain Jonathan Archer of the starship Enterprise called water polo "the best sport in the world". Back in the early 'eighties The University of California Santa Barbara water polo team was one of the last playing in a pool with a shallow end and they aggressively exploited that when they were playing at home. I have no idea why I know that.

[Doc Coco]

11. I met Jeff Float when I was a kid in Chicago

He had medaled in the 1984 freestyle...

[Expecting Rain]

15. I worked on the 1984 Games

Editing the imagery that played on the Jumbotrons during the opening and closing ceremonies. I was so busy working that I only saw one women's volleyball event.

As it happens, I had two friends on the 76-77 water polo team at UCSB. Tough dudes!

[Retrograde]

10. They even ran some of the events near SF

Some of the soccer matches were held at Stanford Stadium, so I had the pleasure of attending an olympic event without having to go all the way to LA. IIRC, the 1984 games used mostly existing facilities and ended up making money.

[Brother Buzz]

13. Peter Ueberroth's leadership made it all happen

For five years Ueberroth served as the organizer of the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles. He was a prominent figure in the games, receiving the Olympic Order in gold at its conclusion. Due to the success of the games, he was named Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1984. Under Ueberroth's leadership and management, the first privately financed Olympic Games resulted in a surplus of nearly US$250 million. This was subsequently used to support youth and sports activities throughout the United States. Coincidentally, he was born on the day on which the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, died.

Ueberroth created a committee of over 150 members (mostly business people and entrepreneurs) to generate ideas, opportunities and solve problems.[citation needed] His aggressive recruiting of sponsors for the 1984 Olympics is credited as the genesis for the current Olympic sponsorship program. Due to recruiting competitors between the Los Angeles Olympic Committee and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), after 1984 all Olympics in the US had their local organizing committees enter into recruitment agreements with the USOC to jointly recruit sponsors and share revenues.

[Xolodno]

8. Smart decision by the IOC....

...to award it to Paris and LA. Cities that pretty much already have all the venues. New Stadium going up over the old Hollywood Park will be ready by then too.

It avoids the black eyes its recently gotten where cities practically bankrupt themselves getting everything built...and then the facilities fall into disuse and ruins.

They really overplayed their hand with the Winter Olympics with making so many ridiculous demands, the probable host country (think it was Norway), basically said screw this shit, were not doing it. So 2022 goes to Beijing.

[StevieM]

12. I hear the smog in Beijing is even worse in the Winter time.

We'll see if they can tamp it down just in time for the Olympics.

Either way, China has an emerging environmental catastrophe.