In hindsight, considering the wild success of the Los Angeles Olympics, it might seem odd that anyone did not want to be part of the games that opened 25 years ago this week.

The Soviet Bloc had its reasons, of course.

Less famously, so did the San Fernando Valley.

As a result of a fight that had classic Valley themes but far-reaching implications, this became the biggest Southern California community to miss out on hosting Olympic sports events – though that doesn’t keep it from sharing in the games’ financial legacy.

“The Valley didn’t want anything,” 1984 Olympics boss Peter Ueberroth said recently, as if to make clear the area was not the victim of some sort of slight.

When the Los Angeles area celebrates the silver anniversary of its gold-medal performance as the

stage for the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad – the opening ceremony at the Coliseum was on July 28, 1984 – the Valley might be the party’s wallflower.

The Valley is surrounded by reminders of the games’ glory.

There are the old sports venues at UCLA (the gymnastics and tennis host) to the south, Pepperdine University (water polo) to the west, the Rose Bowl (soccer) to the east. A little farther away, there’s the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (track and field) and USC (swimming and diving) downtown, The Forum (basketball) down the 405 Freeway, Lake Casitas (rowing) up the coast. In all, more than two dozen Olympic arenas and athletes’ villages in 14 cities are spread over three counties.

But the Valley itself has no such visible mementos of the two summer weeks a generation ago when an artistically and commercially successful athletic festival overcame fears of the Soviet nations’ boycott, freeway traffic, choking smog, terrorism and economic disaster.

“(Valley activists) should be kicking themselves to this day,” said Jim Easton, chairman of the Van Nuys-based sporting-goods company Easton Inc., and an International Olympic Committee member.

Olympic organizers wanted to hold as many as four sports in the Valley, and there was talk of rowing and track-cycling competition in the Sepulveda Basin, the more than 2,000-acre flood-control channel and recreational and wildlife area near the crook of the 405 and 101 freeways.

But years before international emotions ruled the stadiums, neighborhood passions complicated the buildup to the first Summer Olympics to be held in the United States since the 1932 L.A. games. The Valley debate boiled over in an incident in which Ueberroth’s pet dogs were poisoned in the yard of his Encino home.

Community leaders and environmentalists opposed the Olympics coming to the Sepulveda Basin. Surveys showed a majority of local residents were against the Sepulveda Basin plan. That feeling appeared to be most prevalent among older and more conservative people and those living closer to the basin itself.

Leaders of the Valley’s Olympics resistance complained that the construction of world-class sports facilities would spoil the area’s largest park land, and would invite horrible traffic during the Games.

“The Valley was Eden for folks that lived here at that time, and they didn’t want anybody to trifle with it,” said Joy Picus, then a City Council member whose district included the Basin.

Picus said the “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) attitude began in 1978 when Valley residents fought off an attempt by Hollywood Park racetrack to move from Inglewood to the Sepulveda Basin.

“It was people feeling their strength,” Picus said.

Some observers think veterans of the Hollywood Park battle were still on edge when the Olympics organizers came calling, and members of the group called the Coalition to Save the Sepulveda Basin were spoiling for a fight.

“A lot of people could not distinguish between the racetrack and the Olympics,” said Renee Weitzer, a coalition leader during the Hollywood Park flap but a supporter of having the Olympics in the Valley. “I think people were just afraid.”

If people were afraid, this only reflected widespread skepticism about the Olympics in those days. The three recent Summer Games had seen the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches in Munich, the massive municipal debt after Montreal, and the United States-led boycott in Moscow (protesting the Soviets’ intervention in Afghanistan); the Soviets were retaliating by boycotting Los Angeles.

Los Angeles was the only official bidder to host the 1984 games. The only other city to express interest had been the unlikely Tehran, Iran.

Wariness was hardly irrational, recalled Dwight Stones, the world-record high jumper from Glendale who earned Olympic bronze medals in 1972 and ’76 and finished fourth in ’84.

“At the time, (the Olympics) wasn’t something everybody wanted,” Stones said, and for many “it was `Just Say No.”‘

Another large issue colored the opposition to using the Sepulveda Basin for Olympic events: The Valley, a hotbed of the sentiment that produced Proposition 13’s property-tax caps in 1978, also was the center of a campaign to bar the use of tax money on the Olympics.

David Simon, who was the 1984 organizing committee’s government-relations chief, thinks the tax concerns “led to a predisposition to oppose anything `Olympic.”‘

Ueberroth lived in Encino then, and his travel company was based in Van Nuys.

Interviewed last week at a Los Angeles Olympics 25th anniversary celebration at the Coliseum, Ueberroth remembered Valley activists holding a rally in April 1980 at Birmingham High School, and giving out the home addresses of Ueberroth and Mayor Tom Bradley.

“Maybe it was a coincidence, but within an hour, somebody threw arsenic-laced meat over my fence,” Ueberroth said.

The dogs ate the meat and were killed.

The plan for Olympic events in the Sepulveda Basin was defeated in 1981. The international rowing federation settled on Ventura County’s Lake Casitas for its competition.

Ueberroth was among those voting against spending tax money on the games, and said the Valley “deserves credit” for opposing public funding, and forcing L.A. organizers to rely on unprecedented corporate funding and mostly existing venues.

“You can’t fault the Valley” for stiff-arming the Olympics, Ueberroth said.

But some think the Valley blew it by essentially boycotting the Olympics, which posted a $225 million surplus, were reported to net $1 billion for the region’s economy; produced a fortnight of sports highlights, and pleased home-team partisans by awarding U.S. athletes 83 gold medals, more than the next five nations combined.

“The Valley got nothing, and it served them (residents) right,” said City Council member Greig Smith, then chief of staff for council member Hal Bernson.

Said Easton: “It was a shortsighted view by homeowners. They worried about two weeks of traffic, and lost 50 years of memories.”

Regrets? The Valley’s Olympic opponents seem to have few.

“I’ve never heard people express regret,” said Picus, who fought the Sepulveda Basin on constituents’ behalf. “I think they’re willing to bask in the fact they were part of a successful Los Angeles (event).”

“I have no regrets,” said Arnold Regardie, an attorney who was co-chairman of the Sepulveda Basin coalition. “I still think, even today, if they had put the rowing (channel) in, plus the (viewing) stands and everything, it would have ruined the basin.”

It’s not as if the San Fernando Valley missed out completely.

The Valley contributed to the legion of Olympic volunteers and spectators. Birmingham High received a state-of-the-art polyurethane running track, used for training during the games (but since resurfaced).

“It changed (the sport of) track dramatically in the Valley,” Ramirez said. “We’ve always shared our track, with all the youth groups and everyone.”

And the area has benefited from the the surplus. The LA84 Foundation, which awards grants to youth sports programs out of the surplus, says it has made donations totaling $4.5 million to more than 80 Valley-area organizations.

“They (LA84) are a terrific partner,” said Michelle Fleenor, executive director of Reseda-based Students Run L.A., which trains at-risk kids to run in the L.A. Marathon.

Fleenor sees the benefits of the Olympics now. Ironic, because she saw none of the Olympics in 1984.

“I graduated (Simi Valley) High School in 1983, and I would have been their (the Olympics’) target audience,” Fleenor said. “But the thought of traveling (to Olympic venues) seemed so remote. … I used to shop at the Northridge mall all the time. The Valley wasn’t that far away. But the Coliseum seemed far away.”

That the Valley had no Olympic events, Fleenor said, was “too bad.”