Their choice of additional sports, dominated by team disciplines in defiance of the quota rule, was a first illustration of this. Their new “site master plan» drives the point home: the Americans are doing almost everything they want for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. They are twisting their necks to customs, rules and tradition. With the blessing, and even the applause, of the IOC and the international federations.
For additional sports – flag football, lacrosse, cricket, baseball/softball and squash – Los Angeles 2028 threw out the rule of 10.500 athletes at the Olympic Games that Paris 2024 had respected to the letter. With its master plan, Californians are going even further. They rewrite the sports program and their own bid.
The changes are significant. They concern a large number of sports, on a more or less large scale. All have already been approved by the international federations and validated by the IOC Executive Board.
Topping the list is a swap of swimming and athletics in the competition schedule. The swimmers switch in the second week, the athletes are advanced in the first. A revolution, no less. A first since the Mexico Games in 1968.
Casey Wassermann, the president of LA 2028, explained it bluntly: “Athletics is our flagship event. So we're going to start with a bang.» You had to dare. On the audacity index, the Californians have no rivals.
But the reason is not only linked to the show. It also turns out to be more logistical. LA 2028 has in fact planned to organize the opening ceremony and then the swimming events at SoFi Stadium, the American football stadium where the Rams and Chargers in the NFL play. Its capacity will be maintained at 70.000 places for the opening, before being reduced to 38.000 people for swimming, held in a temporary structure. The Americans will not have too much of a week to successfully complete the transition.
As at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, athletics will take place at the recently renovated Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. But it will have to be equipped with a new athletics track. The old one, used for the last Games in California, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1994.
Another important change: whitewater canoeing (slalom and kayak cross) is leaving California. It will move to Oklahoma City, in the state of the same name. The competitions will take place on an existing river, regularly used for international competitions. Softball follows the same route, also relocated to Oklahoma.
For the rest, the new Los Angeles 2028 master plan does not fear gigantism. Gymnastics inherits the Downtown LA Arena, a recently renovated venue, usual home ground for the Lakers in the NBA, the Kings in the NHL and the Sparks in the WNBA. Class.
Basketball will not be badly off either by recovering the new pearl of the sport in Los Angeles, the future Clippers venue in Inglewood.
Urban sports – BMX freestyle and race, skateboard park and street – will go to Sepulveda, in the San Fernando Valley, where the Olympic and Paralympic archery events are also planned.
The City of Long Beach will host the artistic swimming and para-swimming competitions, as well as several other sports to be announced at a later date.
Equestrian sports are also moving. Originally planned for the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area, they will ultimately be held at an existing facility in Temecula. Same fate for shooting, which abandons Sepulveda but without knowing its point of fall. It hasn't been chosen yet. We just know that the competitions will take place in one of the two shooting clubs in Southern California.
Casey Wassermann and the organizing committee have done their sums: by playing with the program and the map of sites, they saved more than 150 million dollars and can “ earn new revenue. » The message has the merit of clarity. It is one of those that the IOC likes to hear.
