A committee of the Los Angeles City Council voted on Friday to support an effort to bring the 2024 Summer Olympics to Los Angeles, ahead of a deadline next month for US Olympic organizers to decide on a city to bid for the Games.
The US Olympic Committee has turned to Los Angeles after dropping Boston last month, after the Massachusetts capital’s mayor said he would not expose the city’s taxpayers to assuming possible cost overruns.
The full Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote on Tuesday on whether to pursue the Olympics after a council committee on Friday unanimously recommended moving forward.
Photo: AFP
The US Olympic Committee must designate a proposed host city before Sept. 15 to enter an international competition for the 2024 Summer Games.
Los Angeles represents a possibly thrifty choice as a host, in large part because officials say most prospective venues and locations for the Games already exist, including Memorial Coliseum, which will be 101 years old in 2024.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has thrown his support behind bringing the Olympics to Los Angeles, but some council members expressed concern that the city — which hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games — would be on the hook for costs that exceed revenues.
A budget released this week by LA24, an Olympics organizing group chaired by sports executive Casey Wasserman, envisions more than US$5.8 billion in costs to host the Games.
The organizers said in a “bid book” that Los Angeles could reach the finish line with a surplus of at least US$160 million, even though cities have often lost money hosting the Games.
Council members, citing cost concerns, directed city officials to ensure the Los Angeles City Council gets a vote on a final agreement with Olympic organizers before the city makes an unbreakable commitment.
That final vote would occur sometime after the US Olympic Committee would submit Los Angeles as its bid city.
“We are an international city that’s going to be competing on an international stage, and we need to get this right,” City Councilman Joe Buscaino said.
Zev Yaroslavsky, a retired politician who was on the City Council when Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Olympics, suggested that despite the city’s notorious traffic, many area residents might stay off the roads during the Games, as they did in 1984.
“There was no traffic in this town for two weeks,” Yaroslavsky said.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later