The International Olympic Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to award both the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics simultaneously in September — a decision announced after a delegation from Los Angeles argued their city stands the best chance of taking the Olympics movement into the future.
Los Angeles and Paris are the only two cities vying for the ’24 Games and both made formal presentations to the IOC Tuesday. Bostom, Rome, Budapes and Hamburg had earlier expressed interest but later pulled out.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti headed the L.A. delegation while the one from Paris was led by French President Emanuelle Macron and included Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. Garcetti and Hidalgo both thanked the IOC after its vote, according to reports from Lausanne.
Now that the IOC has appproved the simultaneous awarding of both Games, it is expected the move will officially secure the ’28 Games for L.A. because the city’s delegation has been receptive to the idea while the Paris organizers have insisted on ’24 because they said the planned Olympic village will not be available in ’28.
“We welcome the executive board’s decision to look at the simultaneous awarding of two successive summer Games,” Garcetti had said at a news conference on Monday.
The L.A. delegation in Switzerland includes Garcetti, LA 2024 Chairman Casey Wasserman, CEO Gene Sykes and Vice Chairs Janet Evans and Candace Cable, among others. The group Tuesday morning gave the IOC a 45-minute presentation on the city’s bid, including a 30-minute Q&A session.
By utilizing existing venues like the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and ones already planned by private investors, LA 2024 will be presenting a balanced $5.3 billion budget for the Games.
“L.A. possesses a huge array of existing, modern sports facilities,” Janet Evans, a four-time Olympic champion and the vice chair of the LA 2024 committee spearheading the city’s effort to be selected as host, told the IOC Tuesday, repeating what has been a recurring them in the Los Angeles bid. “The evaluation Commission called our venues ‘mind-blowing’ — and they are.”
IOC President Thomas Bach echoed a recent report by the IOC’s Evaluation Commission, which concluded that L.A. and Paris’ bids are in line with reforms the committee has been striving for over the last several years.
The Olympic Agenda 2020, which was approved in 2014, is aimed at fighting corruption while improving transparency and good governance.
“We are very impressed with how both cities have embraced the reforms of the Olympic Agenda 2020,” IOC President Thomas Bach said on the eve of the L.A. delegation’s presentation.
Garcetti, one of several L.A. delegation members who spoke Tuesday, sought to reinforce the point as he closed the city’s presentation..
“First, we’re a young city, full of fresh, new ideas,” the mayor said. “Second, we’re not focussed on the last 100 years, we are focussed on the next 100. The question every candidate city must answer is ‘What do we leave behind after the games are over — not only for our city, but for the movement?
We’ve thought a lot about this. Our goal is to offer you something different, something unique — not more of the same. None of us can afford more of the same.”
Garcetti said that, “just as the Greeks used the sun to light the flame, we want to use the sunlight of our creativity to illuminate the future of your great games.”
Also in the L.A. delegation was four-time Olympian Allyson Felix, an Angelina who stressed the United States is a fine choice as an Olympic Games venue despite a turbulent history.
“Look at me. My heritage is African. And my ancestors’ path to my county was one of bondage, not one of freedom,” she said.
“But out of that painful past, our nation grew it adapted, and it changed for the better — and it will again. I believe that with all my heart or I would not be here today supporting our bid.”
The selection of the host city for ’24 — and for ’28 if the IOC votes in support of the idea — will take place in Lima, Peru in September. If awarded one of the Games, it will be the third time Los Angeles will have hosted the Olympics after previously hosting in 1932 and 1984.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, tweeted that he’s “working hard” to bring the Summer Olympics to Los Angeles, but exactly what he’s doing wasn’t immediately clear.
Trump met in the Oval Office last month with Bach and “pledged his full support” for the Los Angeles bid, as the White House put it.
