The International Olympic Committee Evaluation Commission will tour potential Olympic venues Thursday on the second day of its three-day visit to Los Angeles.
“With no new permanent venues required to host the Games, the venue tour will give the IOC Evaluation Commission the clearest, most accurate picture possible of LA 2024’s low-risk and truly sustainable Games Plan,” according to a statement from LA 2024, the committee seeking to bring the Olympics to Los Angeles for the third time.
Los Angeles is competing with Paris to host the games, and the commission plans to spend three days in the French capital beginning Sunday.
“The LA 2024 Games concept and plan was created to address this unique moment in time,” LA 2024 Chairman Casey Wasserman said in opening remarks at a meeting with the visiting IOC officials Wednesday.
“When cities around the world are becoming more reluctant to pursue the Games, L.A. offers the IOC certainty with 88 percent support, a low-risk, verified budget and a sustainable Games plan that doesn’t require us to build a single permanent, new venue,” he said. “We believe this is the Games model for the future because it’s transformative.”
Mayor Eric Garcetti focused on the city’s diversity at the beginning of his welcoming remarks at Wednesday’s meeting.
“If America is a nation of immigrants, then L.A. is its ground zero,” Garcetti said. “Forty percent of my fellow Angelenos were born outside of the United States. In fact, my grandparents were immigrants.
This incredible array of people is what makes our city special, it’s what makes our city work. L.A. isn’t simply diverse; it is a living, breathing metaphor for unity.”
While in Southern California, the IOC Evaluation Commission members will also be given a tour of the facilities on the UCLA campus that Los Angeles officials plan to use as the Olympic and Paralympic Village, where the athletes will be housed.
The commission will issue a report on July 5. The committees seeking the Games will make a formal presentation to IOC members during meetings July 11- 12 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC will make its selection Sept. 13 during a meeting in Lima, Peru.
