On Wednesday, September 13, the voting members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will validate the tripartite agreement that culminated – in the summer – in the allocation principe of the 2024 Games in Paris and the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
As of this date, the two rivals of yesterday will progressively take the clothes of Host Cities of tomorrow.
The first step will be to welcome the IOC President, which will symbolize the importance of the “win-win-win” strategy desired by Thomas Bach since spring 2017.
For the cities and for the President of the Olympic institution, this deadline will arrive quickly.
Thus, as soon as the Peruvian Session ended – September 16 – Thomas Bach will fly to Los Angeles where he will be received by the Mayor of the city, Eric Garcetti, and the LA 2028 Chairman, Casey Wasserman.
In February 2016, Thomas Bach had already had the opportunity to stay in the “City of Angels” to visit the UCLA campus – the future Athletes’ Village – and to take his place in the heart of Staples Center for a Lakers game.
A year earlier, the IOC President had made the travel to the East Coast of the United States. Boston, Massachusetts was at that time the US bid for the 2024 Summer Games.
The two major personalities of the bid, and tomorrow of the American organization, will accompany the IOC President to the National Football League (NFL) game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Washington Redskins.
On this occasion, Thomas Bach will light the cauldron of the Memorial Coliseum which, with the obtaining of the 2028 Games, will host the third Olympic in its history after 1932 and 1984.
Thomas Bach’s visit to the West Coast of the United States will then take on a twist that combines sport and culture, a character already highlighted by the Los Angeles bid to illustrate the multidisciplinary nature of its concept.
In the presence of gymnast Nastia Liukin and other athletes ambassadors of LA 2028, Thomas Bach will attend to the 69th Emmy Awards, which will honor, as every year, the best programs of the US television.
Like the NFL game at the Memorial Coliseum – the Rams Stadium until the Inglewood Stadium was completed – the Emmy Awards will also feature a future 2028 Games venue.
The Microsoft Theater was proposed by the bid to host the weightlifting events at Downtown Sports Park.
The announcement of this program is in any case the day when the IOC publishes the Evaluation Report for the 2028 Games.
Composed of the same members as the one founded for the 2024 Games, the latter had – at the end of the Lausanne Session this summer – received a mandate to write a report on Los Angeles’ ability to receive the 2028 Olympiad.
Not surprisingly, the Commission chaired by Patrick Baumann mentions that “Los Angeles of course builds on the strong proposal that was put forward for 2024, while providing all the necessary guarantees to make us confident that the Olympic Games can be awarded 11 years in advance”.
In detail, Los Angeles 2028, which has received guarantees from the Federal State, the State of California and the City of Los Angeles, intends to make no technical changes to the plan originally proposed for 2024.
However, by reading between the lines, it is obvious that LA 2028 will mechanically benefit from additional credits in order to meet the logistical challenges, particularly in the field of transport.
“Based on a new transport infrastructure initiative that was approved in November 2016 (Measure M), LA 2028 estimates that an additional USD 7.5 billion will be invested in new transport infrastructure by 2028.
This includes improvements to existing rail lines and roadways and a wide range of traffic management initiatives as well as the full completion of the Purple Line Subway extension connecting UCLA with Downtown Los Angeles” has stated the Evaluation Report.
Beyond this issue, the Evaluation Commission has noted that LA 2028 and local authorities will provide the IOC an updated budget by March 2018.
On this point, LA 2028 has indicated that the budget would be balanced and reasonable and that it would not include a more sustained risk than the proposal for the 2024 Games.
For the Commission, this commitment should be contained and could even lead to a budgetary surplus.
Still in an economic dimension, but this time focusing on the marketing aspect, the IOC Commission expects discussions between the Lausanne authority and LA 2028 in the weeks to come.
Final elements should therefore be introduced to clarify the terms and conditions for activating the marketing program, which is neither more nor less than the key point of the agreement signed by the US bid this summer.
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