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≡ FROM IDEA TO REALITY ≡
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games organizing committee unveiled nearly all of its unconfirmed venues for the 2028 Olympic Games, disclosing locations and facility plans for 19 sports at 19 sites.
With all but one discipline – Mountain Biking – now assigned, how does the plan for 2028 look now vs. what was proposed when the Los Angeles bid for the Games was accepted in 2017?
A lot different.
In fact, of the planned venue program for 28 sports in 2017, only half – 14 of 28 – are still part of the plan. There are 14 now slotted elsewhere, plus three sports later incorporated into the permanent sports program and five more added sports!
But let’s see what sports and sites are still where they were originally proposed:
● Aquatics/Open Water: Long Beach waterfront
● Aquatics/Water Polo: Long Beach Convention Center lot
● Athletics: Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
● Badminton: USC/Galen Center
● Cycling/Track: Dignity Health Sports Park
● Fencing: Los Angeles Convention Center
● Football: Rose Bowl
● Golf: Riviera Country Club
● Handball: Long Beach Arena
● Hockey: Dignity Health Sports Park
● Rugby Sevens: Dignity Health Sports Park
● Sailing: Belmont Shore marina
● Tennis: Dignity Health Sports Park
● Volleyball/Indoor: Honda Center
● Weightlifting: L.A. Live/Peacock Theater
Beyond the eternal Olympic anchors of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl, four sports that were proposed at the Dignity Health Sports Park – opened in 2003 as The Home Depot Center – have been maintained: cycling/track, hockey, rugby sevens and tennis. That’s six of the 14 sports which have remained as in the bid.
In 2017, it was impossible to consider a Los Angeles Olympic bid without one or more facilities at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, as well as the Los Angeles Tennis Center on campus. But with the entire Olympic Village assigned to UCLA, every facility there will be needed for training and so judo and wrestling had to be moved.
USC was planned to have its historic baseball facility – Dedeaux Field – reconfigured to host swimming, diving and artistic swimming. But the university is renovating that section of the campus and the decision was made to go elsewhere, sending swimming to SoFi Stadium and artistic swimming to a temporary facility in Long Beach and diving back to the 1932 site at what is now known as the LA84 Foundation/John C. Argue Swim Stadium.
And no 2017 plan for a future Olympic Games in Los Angeles could imagine not using The Forum, site of basketball in 1984 and of the “Showtime” Era teams of the Los Angeles Lakers. But it was renovated to become primarily a music venue and was surpassed for basketball by the nearby Intuit Dome, home of the L.A. Clippers, opened this season, and confirmed to be the basketball venue for 2028.
Is this good? Bad? Neither; it’s quite normal for actual Olympic venues to vary from bid sites as requirements change and the host city itself changes. In the case of Los Angeles, the change in the program – 23 sports in 1984, 28 in the 2017 bid and now 36 in 2028 – has forced some of the changes and new sites – like the Intuit Dome – offer changes beneficial for the Games.
Perhaps more amazing is that the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic venue landscape not only has no new sites to be built – a key promise of the 2017 bid, which has been zealously maintained – but is reusing five venues/venue sites from the 1932 Olympic Games and eight from 1984:
1932 Olympic venues (5):
● Long Beach Marine Stadium (rowing in 1932)
● Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (track & field)
● LA84/Argue Swim Stadium (swimming, diving)
● Riviera Country Club (equestrian)
● Rose Bowl (cycling/track)
1984 Olympic venues (8):
● Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (track & field)
● Rose Bowl (football)
● Belmont Shore Marina (sailing)
● Long Beach Convention Center (fencing)
● Santa Anita Park (equestrian)
+ BMO Stadium built over the Los Angeles Sports Arena (boxing)
+ Dignity Health Sports Park built over the Olympic Velodrome (cycling)
+ Los Angeles Convention Center (Main Press Center)
The Coliseum – opened in 1923 – and the Rose Bowl – opened in 1922 – will be the first sites to be used for three different Olympic Games.
That’s recycling at its best. There may yet be more changes, but it’s remarkable that five of 29 sites – nearly one in five venues – for the 2028 Games will be conducted at the same venue also used for the Games of the Xth Olympiad, nearly a century earlier!
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