1984 Olympic Games

News, views and noise from the non-stop, worldwide circus of Olympic sport: ● Athletics ● It’s a World Championship year, so crazy things are happening. Like Kenny Bednarek, a freshman at Indian Hills Community College running a wind-aided 19.49 in the prelims of the National Junior College Championships in Hobbs, New Mexico. What? 19.49? What? […]

(This is a reprint of our Lane One column of 9 May 2018, which was available in our old PDF format and not as...

Ever since the late Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau famously claimed – six years prior to the 1976 Olympic Games in his city – that “The Games could no more run a deficit than a man could have a baby,” observers have closely watched Olympic budgets. Drapeau’s claim, of course, turned out to be a colossal […]

Over its history, the one constant in Los Angeles has been change. The city has grown, morphed and been re-shaped by business, culture, its...

The International Olympic Committee has trumpeted the benefits of its Agenda 2020 reform program, one of the first initiatives undertaken by then-new IOC President Thomas Bach in December 2014. Its concepts significantly changed the bidding process for the Olympic Games and Winter Games, in part by emphasizing the use of “existing facilities and the use […]

The Associated Press’s Stephen Wade posted a story last Friday entitled “Olympic volunteers: One-time chance, or exploitation?” and proceeded to quote a Drexel Sports Management processor named Joel Maxcy, who called the practice of using volunteers, “To me, it’s very clearly economic exploitation.” The rest of the article struggled to find any prospective volunteers for […]

The modern Olympic Movement was dramatically changed with the staging of the Games of the XXIIIrd Olympiad in Los Angeles in 1984. The private financing, the use of existing facilities and thousands of volunteers are well remembered, along with many technical innovations that continue in use today. What is a little less appreciated is the […]

Sports creates enduring memories, not only of events and wins and losses, but of the places you go and the people you meet. In the past week, this was underscored by three unforgettable people who made the sport better. ● The most recent, and sad, occurrence was last Tuesday’s passing of Fred Thompson, for decades […]

One of the many revolutionary changes made by the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles was the concept of using volunteers as a main feature of the workforce. It was successful beyond all expectations and became a permanent legacy to succeeding Olympic organizing committees, all of whom have […]

Sad news that Rolf Engen, the commissioner of volleyball at the 1984 Olympic Games, passed away on 31 July, at age 88. Initially a basketball player, he turned to volleyball after an injury and was a setter on the first UCLA volleyball team and then an All-American in 1953 and 1954. He was a member […]