★ The Sports Examiner: Chronicling the key competitive, economic and political forces shaping elite sport and the Olympic Movement.★
★ To get the daily Sports Examiner Recap by e-mail: sign up here! ★
★ Friends: Yippee! Now 49 donors have helped to meet our technical costs for 2024. If you’re enjoying TSX, please chip in with your donation.. Add your support to make this site even better. ★
≡ SCENE & HEARD ≡
“I think the Oklahoma project is one that embodies the way that we are looking at the Games hosting from now on.”
That’s from International Olympic Committee Sports Director Kit McConnell (NZL), speaking during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games about the 2028 plan to place the Canoe Slalom events at the existing RiverSport OKC facility, acknowledged as the best in the United States.
There is no existing facility in the Southern California area which is used for slalom racing, and the LA28 organizing committee has promised not to build new venues for the 2028 Games, leaning instead on the wide variety of sports facilities already available.
So, for Canoe Slalom, a temporary facility was envisioned, originally in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area in the northern part of Los Angeles, and was going to be expensive. That was in 2014, when the original L.A. bid for the 2024 Olympic Games was compiled.
But the Oklahoma City slalom facility came on line in 2016 and new possibilities emerged. In 2017, Los Angeles agreed to stage the 2028 Olympic Games, and in the interim, the Riversport OKC facility became the premier Canoe Slalom venue in the U.S.
Said McConnell:
“Using an existing venue with a strong community of canoeing and reaching out to different parts of the country using those existing venues is a really a great model to use.
“I know they are hosting the World Championships in 2026 in the build-up to LA28. It is a great pathway towards the Games so full support for that.
“You have got a really great base to work from for a number of years to build the excitement that we see here in Paris.”
The Riversport OKC facility has already hosted International Canoe Federation World Cup events, and the 2026 Worlds will be a full demonstration of what the site can be during 2028. In addition, the LA28 organizers placed softball in Oklahoma City as well, taking advantage of the city’s history as the site of the annual NCAA Women’s College World Series. The 13,000-seat Devon Park – formerly the Don E. Porter ASA Hall of Fame Stadium (until 2017) and USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium (2017-24) – includes four fields, so training facilities are already included.
McConnell noted the efficiency of using the Oklahoma City site for slalom and the Long Beach Marine Stadium – used for rowing at the 1932 Olympic Games – for the Canoe Sprint events:
“It will be a really good balance of using that existing slalom venue in a different part of the country and taking sprint downtown, right by the beach in what is truly a heritage venue from a previous Olympic Games many years ago.
“I think it is a really good balance for the sport to have the sprint right downtown in the heart of the host city and using the existing venue with an existing community to build on for slalom.”
The IOC, under its Olympic Agenda 2020, now pushes for as little construction as possible at Olympic Games, preferring existing or temporary sites, the primary factor which led to the $232.5 million surplus created by the last Olympic Games to be held in Los Angeles, in 1984.
¶
★ Receive our exclusive, weekday TSX Recap by e-mail by clicking here.
★ Sign up a friend to receive the TSX Recap by clicking here.
★ Please consider a donation here to keep this site going.
For our updated, 547-event International Sports Calendar for the rest of 2024 and beyond, by date and by sport, click here!
