A visitor takes a photo of a blazing Olympic cauldron at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017. The cauldron was lit early Wednesday morning at the stadium that was the site of the 1932 and 1984 Olympics. An International Olympic Committee meeting in Peru is to make it official that LA will host in 2028 and that the 2024 Games will go to Paris. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

An artist’s rendering of downtown Los Angeles, including Staples Center and the L.A. Convention Center, as they would look for the Los Angeles Olympic Games. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

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An artist’s rendering of the proposed swimming venue for the Los Angeles Olympic Games. The LA 2028 plan calls for temporary open-air facility to be built on the site of USC’s Dedeaux Field. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s rendering of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, as it would appear for the Olympic Games in 2028. The Coliseum has a rich Olympic history, having hosted track and field events in the 1984 and 1932 Games. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s rendering of the Los Angeles Football Club stadium, which is under construction in Exposition Park. The stadium would hold 22,000, and would be used in the Olympics for soccer prelims. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)



An artist’s rendering of StubHub Center in Carson, which would be used to host the modern pentathlon equestrian competition in the Olympic Games. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s rendering of Los Angeles City Hall, which would serve as the backdrop for the start of the Olympic marathon. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

USC’s Galen Center, part of the downtown cluster of venues, would be the site of the judo competition in the Los Angeles Olympics Games. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s renderding of the Los Angeles Convention center, as it would look for Olympic fencing competition. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s rendering of the South Bay’s Velo Sports Center, which would host Olympic track cycling. The venue, adjacent to StubHub Center in Carson is “America’s largest indoor velodrome,” according to its website. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)



An artist’s rendering of the Los Angeles Convention Center, as it would be configured for boxing in the 2028 Olympics. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s rendering of the proposed venue for Olympic dressage competition, part of the Valley Sports Park. The Santa Monica mountains would serve as the backdrop. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s rendering of the proposed Olympic Equestrian jumping venue, part of the Valley Sports Park complex. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s rendering of Staples Center, which would home to basketball in the Los Angeles Olympic Games. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

An artist’s rendering of the Long Beach waterfront. The city is the proposed site of Olympic sailing competition. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)



An artist’s rendering of the Long Beach shoreline, as it would look for the 2028 Olympic Games. The area would host team handball, water polo, BMX, sailing, marathon swimming and triathlon events. (Photo courtesy of LA 2028)

The International Olympic Committee has once again turned to Los Angeles to rescue and transform an Olympic movement in crisis, formally awarding the 2028 Games to the city and embracing its vision to guide the IOC into the 21st century.

The IOC’s unanimous ratification Wednesday in Lima, Peru of a historic agreement to award the 2024 Games to Paris and return the Olympics to Southern California four years later is a triumph for two iconic cities with deep Olympic histories and unique and innovative views on how to reinvent the Games and reconnect them with a younger audience.

“We have reached an extraordinary moment for the Olympic Movement and for the future of the Olympic Games,” said Anita DeFrantz, an IOC member and senior advisor to Los Angeles 2028. “We have two excellent plans, one for organizing the 2024 Games and one for organizing the 2028 Games – in many ways, it’s a perfect decision for all of us.” Related Articles Can L.A. handle scandal-ridden IOC for 2028 Olympics?

‘The 1984 Boys’: How the ’84 Olympics planted the seed for Casey Wasserman, Eric Garcetti to spearhead the Games’ return to L.A. in 2028

Paris, which will hold its Olympic and Paralympic Games on the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Olympics immortalized in the movie “Chariots of Fire,” and Los Angeles join London as the only cities to host three Olympic Games.

“This is a momentous day for the people of Los Angeles and the United States,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said. “For the first time in a generation, we are bringing the Games back to the City of Angels. L.A. loves the OIympics because the Games have lifted up our city twice before. But to us the Games have always represented an even brighter future and the chance to harness the power of sport and the Olympic Movement again to inspire the next generation – for the next 11 years and beyond.”

The IOC’s decision to jointly award two Games for the first time in nearly a century caps Los Angeles’ unlikely four-year pursuit of the Games and marks an embattled IOC’s acknowledgement that it must make dramatic change in order to survive.

“This makes L.A. for the next decade the most important sports city in the world,” said Rick Burton, a Syracuse sports management professor. “And I think for the IOC it gives them enormous stability.”

The IOC arrived in Lima in the midst of an even greater crisis than 1978, when Los Angeles was awarded the 1984 Games by default after Tehran, the only other candidate, dropped out of the bid process. The high cost of hosting the Olympics has scared off a series of major global cities from bidding for the Games and the IOC continues to be mired in a string of corruption scandals and sinking ratings with young viewers.

At least six of the last 10 Olympic host cities have finished in the red, their combined deficits totaling more than $18 billion. Eight cities have withdrawn bids for the last two available Olympic Games.

The emergence of fiscally stable and innovative bids in Los Angeles and Paris provide the IOC, concerned that no other city would emerge as a viable candidate for the 2028 Games, with more than a decade of stability and the opportunity to regroup with the first joint award since 1921.

“That was part of the attractiveness for the IOC,” said Alma College professor Derick L. Hulme, author of “The Political Olympics: Moscow, Afghanistan, and the 1980 U.S. Boycott,” referring to the joint award. “The new model here of awarding, effectively awarding two Games at the same time really solved a number of problems and issues with the IOC.

“Most importantly it relieved them of this incredible pressure of trying to cultivate potential host cities for a number of years, and secondly it really wanted the United States to host the Games. There are tremendous advantages financially and in viewership for having the Games in the U.S. But I think they were extremely reluctant to award the Games to the U.S. during the time that (Donald) Trump would be potentially president. So giving the Games to L.A. in 2028, I think is a master stroke for the IOC.”

And, Garcetti insisted, a courageous one.

“Much has been written and said in this campaign about the fast-changing nature of the world, and the Movement’s ability to change and adapt with it,” Garcetti said. “The ‘24 and ‘28 decision should put aside any concerns about the IOC’s willingness not only to recognize change, but to embrace it.

“The mark of greatness isn’t recognizing the need for change, the mark of greatness is acting upon it.”

Wednesday was also a triumph for Garcetti and LA 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman, dubbed by IOC officials the “1984 Boys.” Driven by the spirit of the 1984 Olympics that shaped them as boys and confident in their vision and ability to deliver transformative Games, the 1984 Boys willed the city’s longshot bid to victory.

“The quality of L.A.’s bid really boils down to the leadership of two people: Mayor Eric Garcetti and Casey Wasserman,” U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive Scott Blackmun. “These two gentlemen never gave up on L.A.’s Olympic dreams – and thank goodness, they didn’t.”

A Los Angeles bid for the 2012 Games didn’t make it past the USOC’s first round of cuts. A bid for the 2016 Olympics lost to Chicago as the U.S. bid candidate in the finals of the USOC selection process. In 2015 the USOC board chose Boston as the U.S. candidate for the 2024 Games, ignoring the recommendation of Blackmun, USOC chairman Larry Probst and other top USOC officials, who favored Los Angeles, and mounting public opposition in Boston to the Olympics.

After the Boston bid imploded, Los Angeles returned to the 2024 campaign in September 2015, its late entry into the international stage of the bidding process only adding to its obstacles. Paris was a heavy favorite, its status bolstered by the belief that a Eurocentric IOC would be unwilling to extend a 12-year gap between European Olympics, the longest ever, another four years.

“Two short years ago, who among us could have imagined the scenario before us today?” Garcetti told the IOC Wednesday. “Very few, if any; I know that we certainly didn’t.

“But from the outset of our bid, we’ve held fast to the notion that L.A.’s primary objective was to do what was best for the Olympic Movement. To be honest, we did not imagine that would include changing our bid from ‘24 to ‘28. But, our willingness – and our ability to do so is, I hope, a reflection of our commitment to you.”

Along the way, however, Rome, Budapest and Hamburg dropped out of the bidding process. The persistence of Wasserman and Garcetti, the privately financed bid’s fiscal soundness and reliance on existing venues and already approved infrastructure projects, and the city’s place at the intersection of the entertainment and technology industries led IOC officials to increasingly view Los Angeles as a viable host city.

Longshot status gave way to a sense of inevitability that Los Angeles would land at least the 2028 Games when Bach first acknowledged publicly in March that he was open to awarding both the 2024 and 2028 Olympics this year.

When the IOC voted unanimously in July to approve the joint awarding, all that was left was for Los Angeles and Paris officials to work out a tripartite agreement on which city would host which Games.

“The ultimate validation of LA 2028’s New Games for a New Era, and Los Angeles’ vision for the future,” Wasserman called it.

That agreement was reached and approved by the Los Angeles City Council last month, making Wednesday a formality.

“I couldn’t imagine this,” Garcetti said. “Like anything worth fighting for this was a long journey. We weren’t the original bid city. There were five bid cities and little by little we got to a victory today.”

There still remain more challenges and questions ahead.

Los Angeles will be the first city to host the Olympics more than a decade after having been awarded them. Those 11 years give the city an additional four-year cushion to avoid the construction completion issues that have plagued several recent Games. But the extended period creates additional uncertainty surrounding the Los Angeles Games, four more years to be impacted by environmental, economic and security issues.

“Eleven years is a really, really long time,” said Burton, the USOC’s chief marketing officer for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. “It is not going to be an easy thing to do to keep this thing together given it’s 11 years and how much things could change.”

The most immediate question facing the Games is just how tarnished will they be by the time they arrive in Los Angeles by the IOC’s continued corruption scandals.

Wednesday’s ceremony came as at least three ongoing law enforcement investigations on three continents are looking at corruption allegations against at least five current or former IOC members, and just eight days after a dawn police raid at the home of Brazil’s Carlos Arthur Nuzman, a former IOC member who led Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 bid.

Nuzman is but the latest high-profile IOC figure to be ensnared in French and Brazilian investigations into corruption within the IOC and the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body. Of particular interest to investigators are allegations representatives of Rio’s Olympic efforts bribed IOC members to vote for the Brazilian city in the 2009 election of the 2016 host city.

“The Olympic Games were used as a big trampoline for acts of corruption,” Brazilian prosecutors said last week.

Nuzman, Brazilian prosecutors said, is also at the heart of a scheme funded by businessman Arthur Cesar de Menezes Soares Filho and has led to the conviction for Rio de Janeiro governor Sergio Cabral in June on bribery and money-laundering charges.

Specifically, prosecutors said Nuzman was the link between Soares and Lamine Diack, a former influential IOC member from Senegal and IAAF president from 1999 to 2015. A British Virgin Island company linked to Soares deposited $2 million into a bank account belonging to Papa Massata Diack, Lamine Diack’s son and the former IAAF marketing director, three days before the 2009 IOC vote, according to Brazilian and French court documents. Pamodzi Sports Consulting, a Papa Diack company, then transferred $299,300 into a bank account in Seychelles for Yemli Limited, a company controlled by IOC member Frankie Fredericks, the Brigham Young educated former Namibia sprinter who won four Olympic medals in the 1990s.

Fredericks was a “scrutineer” assigned by the IOC to monitor the 2009 election in Copenhagen that also included Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo. He was also selected to chair the IOC evaluation commission of 2024 host city candidates but resigned following published reports detailing the bribery allegations.

Fredericks said he has done nothing wrong and that the payment was for “services rendered” in promoting track and field in Africa from 2007 to 2011.

Lamine Diack has already been investigated by the IOC for taking bribes from a sports marketing firm and was arrested in November 2015 by French authorities who have accused him of taking at least $1.2 million in bribes while IAAF president to cover up positive drug tests for at least six Russian track and field athletes.

IOC executive board member Patrick Hickey of Ireland resigned over the weekend. Hickey was arrested during the Rio Games for his alleged role in an Olympic ticket scalping operation. Hickey is scheduled to go to trial in November.

Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of Kuwait, an IOC member, president of the Association of National Olympic Committees and power broker both within the IOC and FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has also been accused of corruption.

Ahmad resigned all his FIFA positions, including a spot on the influential FIFA Council, in April after he was implicated in court documents related to the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of Richard Lai, an Asian Football Confederation official. Lai pled guilty in federal court in New York to accepting a $950,000 bribe related to the 2011 FIFA presidential election.

Ahmad has been credited as being a driving force behind Bach being elected IOC president in September 2013.

Dick Pound, a Montreal attorney, founder of the World Anti-Doping Agency and the IOC’s longest-serving member, said this week the revolving door of corruption scandals have dealt the IOC “a severe hit in terms of credibility.”

“Every time another IOC member is implicated in something potentially nefarious we lose more credibility,” Pound told the BBC in Lima. “What are we doing taking all these hits and doing nothing about it? We’ve got to recognize that we haven’t done enough.

“If your conduct has put the IOC into disrepute, you should be liable to at least vigorous investigation and potentially sanctioned for it.

“That has not happened.”

The IOC seemed to acknowledge in a statement this week that “there are indications that payments have been made in return for votes “over the designation of host cities for the biggest global sporting events.”

Bach, however, insisted, “there is no collective responsibility whatsoever on the IOC.”

There is also uncertainty surrounding the budget for the Games, which isn’t expected to be completed for months. While 83 percent of respondents to a recent Loyola Marymount poll said they supported the 2028 Olympics, recent months have seen the emergence of increasingly well-organized and vocal opposition to the Games that was noticeably absent through most of the bidding process.

“Despite the fact that the IOC has awarded L.A. the bid to host the 2028 Summer Olympics, the fight isn’t over,” No Olympics LA said in a statement. “L.A.’s mayor, city council, and the bid committee have all been complicit in this charade. They accepted the IOC’s offer on the flawed premise of ‘enhancing the lives’ of L.A.’s residents by using youth sports as a band-aid for our urban crises. But for the communities, activists, and organizers of L.A., the conversation is only just beginning. The notion that ‘L.A. is going to have the Olympics, one way or another’ isn’t necessarily true, as many opportunities still exist to intervene and stop them entirely.”

LA 2028 will receive at least $2 billion from the IOC, up from $1.7 billion had the city hosted the 2024 Games and the largest payout ever to an Olympic host city. Los Angeles also will receive the IOC’s 20 percent share of the 2028 Games surplus. With the deal, LA 2028 will receive 80 percent of those Olympics’ surplus. LA 2028 initially projected a $166.1 million surplus in 2015 documents, an estimate considered conservative by several longtime Olympic bid analysts.

The IOC also agreed to provide LA 2028 a $180 million advance, to be paid out in 20 quarterly $9 million payments beginning Jan. 1. This marks the first time the IOC has provided a host city an advance. LA 2028 will use as much as $160 million to fund youth sports programs through Los Angeles Parks and Recreation starting next year.

The IOC also agreed to concessions that will result in $67 million in applied cost savings, and $39 million in in-kind services.

But LA 2028 officials acknowledge that they might not have a finalized budget until the first quarter of 2018. It could be 18 months before that budget is validated by the accounting firm KPMG in city council mandated analysis that will be paid for by LA 2028.

KPMG validated a balanced $5.3 billion budget for the 2024 bid last year.

A memorandum of understanding between the city, Los Angeles 2028, the local organizing committee, and the USOC requires LA 2028 to establish an Allocated Contingency account of $270 million, up from $250 million under the MOU for the 2024 Games.

LA 2028 plans to set aside $487.6 million for contingencies. The federal government has agreed to cover security costs which could exceed $2 billion.

Standing on the stage in Lima Wednesday, basking in the glow of the global spotlight, Los Angeles officials embraced the challenges ahead of them with a confidence bolstered by the obstacles they had already overcome and a sense of Olympic destiny perhaps unique to Angelenos.

Garcetti and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo flanked Bach as he called for the vote. Hidalgo took a long, deep, nervous breath. Garcetti’s hands shook at his side.

When the vote was over, Hidalgo teared up and continued to gasp. Garcetti beamed and nodded toward the IOC members and placed his hand over a heart the Olympics had captured more than 30 years earlier.

“The Olympics are in our blood, they’re in our DNA,” he said. “We had them in ‘32, in ’84 (when) I was a 13-year-old boy and it was a dream of mine to one day to give my daughter what my parents gave me: the experience of the world coming to our city.”