The Paris 2024 Games are ending and handing over to Los Angeles — its beaches, hills and cinema — which must get to work for 2028 after the spectacle offered in Paris. After London (1908, 1948, 2012) and Paris (1900, 1924, 2024), Los Angeles will become in 2028 the third city to host the Summer Olympics for the third time after 1932 and 1984, from July 14 to 30, 2028.
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The Coliseum in the City of Angels will be the link between all eras by hosting, as in 1932 and 1984, the athletics events, placed at the beginning of the program, in order to leave time for the SoFi Stadium of the Rams and Chargers (US football teams) to become the “Inglewood Stadium”, an extraordinary aquatic arena (38,000 seats) for new exploits by Katie Ledecky and Léon Marchand.
As is tradition, Los Angeles will offer a first glimpse of its Games with a 15-minute show during the closing ceremony of the Paris Games on Sunday evening at the Stade de France, with Hollywood star Tom Cruise in particular. After two weeks of superb images on the Olympic sites in Paris, the Californian megalopolis will have to redouble its efforts and try to make its mark, as it cannot offer the equivalent of the historical monuments of the French capital.
“Good luck Los Angeles to do better than Paris”writes the American magazine Sports Illustrated, which estimates that “Los Angeles has already lost.” “How can a city compete with Paris? LA could organize swimming in Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s pool, it still wouldn’t be up to par.” “It will be authentically Los Angeles and Californian.”assured the head of the organization of “LA28” Casey Wasserman before the Paris Games.
“We will be there for the same thing, to organize spectacular Games.” “We don’t have the Eiffel Tower, we have the letters of Hollywood. We have incredible competition sites and a magnificent environment,” added the American Tony Estanguet on Saturday at a press conference. The pressure will be strong for LA, eleven years after being designated host city at the same time as Paris, in 2017.
The capital of cinema will have to capitalize on its stars and its sense of showmanship, which it offered a glimpse of with rapper Snoop Dogg, a consultant for NBC and unofficial mascot of the Paris Games on social networks after having paraded his joyful nonchalance on all possible sites. In terms of organization, Los Angeles already knows the major challenges that await it. Transport first: Mayor Karen Bass promised Paris on Saturday “car-free Games”, a formula that can raise a smile seen from LA, where the individual car is the norm and traffic jams are daily on the giant highways that match the city’s immensity.
“These car-free Games will mean you will have to use public transport to get to all the venues,” specified the mayor. By “public transport” we mean buses, to compensate for a subway network (5 and a half lines with reduced flow) and tiny trains on the scale of the megalopolis of Southern California. The mayor also indicated that she wanted to “rehouse” and “remove from the streets” the homeless, estimated at 75,500 people in Los Angeles, a sad showcase of a California where inequalities are inexorably widening, in particular in the face of inflation and the cost of real estate.
On the sports side, breaking is already leaving the program after its incursion in Paris, while five sports are making their appearance: baseball/softball, cricket, squash, flag football – or non-contact American football – and lacrosse, a team sport derived from Native American cultures.
