Why L.A. 2028 might not be such a good deal - for the city or the IOC

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Why L.A. 2028 might not be such a good deal - for the city or the IOC

Now what for Los Angeles and a Summer Olympics it apparently won’t have until 2028?

For a number of reasons, an unprecedented 11-year wait between being named host city for the Games and staging them is fraught with potential pitfalls.

Costs will rise.  Contracts may need renegotiation.  Opponents will have more time to make their case.  The political landscape in Los Angeles could change dramatically.

Such issues need to be addressed because all signs currently point to the International Olympic Committee deciding in July to award both the 2024 and 2028 Summer Games rather than have Los Angeles and Paris contend for the lone prize they originally thought was at stake, the 2024 Olympics.

And, although this is less certain, the conventional wisdom now is that the IOC will not be smart enough to see the obvious reasons for giving 2024 to Los Angeles rather than Paris.

 

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A cautionary tale in book about Boston's Olympic bid demise

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A cautionary tale in book about Boston's Olympic bid demise

“Hence, horrible shadow!  Unreal mockery, hence!”

                                                 --Macbeth, Act III, Scene IV

Like Banquo’s ghost, the specter of dead Olympic bids will be in the room to haunt the International Olympic Committee’s executive board Friday as it discusses an extraordinary, temporary ablution of the bloody mess past vainglories have left.

And the spirit of No Boston Olympics also will hover over the proceedings in Lausanne, Switzerland, reminding the IOC that its days of selfishly dictating terms to supplicant cities are ending, at least where democratic countries are concerned.

The 2015 victory by an underfunded group of seemingly quixotic volunteers over the wealthy, politically vested interests who pushed for Boston as the 2024 Summer Olympic host serves, like Macbeth, as a cautionary tale about the limits of power and wanton ambition.

So worried is the IOC about the impact of having its members vote in September to reject either Paris or Los Angeles, the two great cities (and the only cities) still seeking the 2024 Summer Olympics, that it is apparently set to approve an unprecedented process after which one city will get 2024 and the other, 2028.  (L.A. likely has the latter.)

This is a clear case of the chooser having been turned beggar.

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Chances grow of two-for-one Summer Games (2024-28) deal

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Chances grow of two-for-one Summer Games (2024-28) deal

The chances have increased substantially for the hosts of both the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics to be named at the same time this September.

That was the takeaway both from an action the International Olympic Committee executive board took Friday and also the statements IOC President Thomas Bach made in a press conference after the meeting at the site of the 2018 Winter Olympics, Pyeongchang, South Korea.

In his first public comments directly on the possibility of a joint award to Los Angeles and Paris, the 2024 candidates, Bach made it clear the IOC would do well “to exploit a positive situation” of having “two excellent candidates from two major Olympic countries.”

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In Fredericks' case, IOC tries to extinguish yet another fire

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In Fredericks' case, IOC tries to extinguish yet another fire

Did Frankie Fredericks jump to do the right thing or was he pushed?

And should the four-time Olympic silver medalist sprinter and International Olympic Committee member from Namibia be allowed to return to his administrative positions in international sport, no matter the outcome of investigations by the IOC ethics committee and French law enforcement?

Those are the questions raised by Fredericks’ stepping down from major roles in the IOC and the international track federation after the French newspaper LeMonde reported last week financial ties between Fredericks and the sulfurous former IAAF marketing consultant Papa Massata Diack.

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On the defensive, IOC president plays alternative facts trump card

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On the defensive, IOC president plays alternative facts trump card

Funny what you will find while looking for something else.

I was searching the International Olympic Committee’s web site to check a reported fact about how much the IOC charges cities to bid for the Olympic Games when I came across the headlines pictured above on a story posted the day after the Sept. 15, 2015 deadline for 2024 Summer Games bids to be submitted.

Eighteen months later, that headline looks like an IOC version of something Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway would have explained away as “alternative facts.”

A rejection in a public referendum (Hamburg), fiscal priorities (Rome) and the threat of a referendum (Budapest) have reduced the competition to just two world-class cities (Los Angeles and Paris) and made a mockery of the IOC’s self-congratulatory headlines.

In an interview last week with the German magazine Stuttgarter Nachrichten, IOC President Thomas Bach blamed the dropouts on the “anti-establishment movements we have in many European countries.”

Or, alt facts.

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