In a story I first saw reported by the great Philip Hersh of the Chicago Tribune, two time Olympic host Los Angeles has formally announced it's intention to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics in a letter sent to the USOC.
L.A last bid for the 2016 Games, but lost in the final round of the US bid process to eventual overall fourth place finisher Chicago.
(Quick tangent, I watched that Chicago elimination happen in my high school cafeteria and I was completely inconsolable. People were confused.)
This announcement essentially doubles as the start of what will hopefully be a serious domestic competition to determine who will be the United States' bid city for 2024. Groups in a few cities have made overtures regarding a bid over the past few months. These cities include Boston, Baltimore/DC, Dallas and even Tulsa (I appreciate the bravado, Tulsa, but you have no chance). L.A's announcement also comes after the USOC sent letters to the mayors of 35 US cities to gauge interest on potential bids.
It's all fine and dandy when Tulsa says they're going to bid for the Olympic Games. Everybody knows they have not shot, and you just sort of wait to see what their crazy plan would have been. Even a city like Boston, which on the surface looks like a very viable host city (until you look deeper to see that the city isn't as big as you think, doesn't have the sports infrastructure you think and doesn't have the overall infrastructure you think), saying they have interest doesn't really mean all that much.
L.A bidding is a big deal. That's a city ready to host the Olympics. They have all the venues you could every want. Just off the top of my head; Staples Center, Nokia Theater, Home Depot Center (They have a Velodrome there, crazy right), L.A Convention Center, Pauley Pavilion, The Galen Center, the Rose Bowl, The LA Coliseum, LA Memorial Sports Arena. I mean, the Forum is still there and USC has a swimming stadium, although I'm not sure that's a viable spot anymore. The city also has experience hosting giant events, possesses a huge airport and, from what I can tell (although I'd love somebody from LA to actually give me a first hand view of this), decent transportation infrastructure.
Seems like a shoe-in right? Well, L.A has two problems. Well, they have more than two problems, but I don't know the area well enough to comment on things like where a Olympic Village would be or how the city would sell paying for the Olympics over fixing other problems that, once again, I'm not informed enough to analyze. With that said, the first of the two problems that I can address is manageable, but annoying. The traffic is going to be hell in Los Angeles during the Olympics. It's already horrible anyway, but the influx of all of those people in the during the two weeks will make it a total parking lot.
In addition, you know those track and field events that occur during the Olympics? Well, the City of Angels needs a place to hold them. Simply put, L.A has to find a location for a 80,000+ track stadium somewhere in an already very well developed city. As was pointed out to me on Twitter by everybody's favorite Maryland women's basketball beat writer Daniel Gallen, the recent report that the AEG football stadium plan at L.A Live may have fallen through is a very interesting development for the L.A bid team. First of all, the idea of cramming a stadium into the already cramped LA Live development was ambitious, but besides that logistical issue, there is now no defined football stadium plan in place for Los Angeles. This could be a good thing for an L.A bid. The city had signed off on the AEG deal, and they seem committed to bringing pro football back to L.A. However, there was no guarantee that the city would have signed off on that stadium and then an Olympic Stadium. Now the city can focus on building a football stadium that could also function as the track venue in 2024.
Now, while I stated that I wasn't sure if L.A would approve of two separate gigantic stadium projects, I don't really have any basis for that. The fact of the matter is, Los Angeles could handle two NFL teams, which could mean two stadiums. Furthermore, USC and UCLA are two entities that could serve as a tenant for an Olympic Stadium after the Games. The key to selling a big Olympic venue project to your own citizens, the USOC and the IOC is to have plans for it after the Games. The London organizers thought they did, and now 800 people are trying to gain the rights use the Olympic Stadium. That's not what you want if you're apart of the L.A bid team. For lack of better phrasing, it's not a good look to have that unresolved going into a competitive bid process.
Well, just writing about all this makes me very excited to see the whole US bid process play out. I'm interested to see what other cities throw their names into that hat. I'm intrigued to delve deeper into each city that enters the race, to see the advantages and disadvantages they have. I mean, I know a bit about L.A, but I've never been there and can't speak to the local issues the city will have like I did in my post about what a bid in the Baltimore/DC area could look like. Heck, I'm not even sure I went enough in depth in that piece. Well, we've got a lot of time, so bear with me, and we'll figure this out together... If you want to.
336 days until Sochi.