2024 Olympics: Paris looks to build bridges while L.A. has to walk through walls

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2024 Olympics: Paris looks to build bridges while L.A. has to walk through walls

Paris and Los Angeles treated the start of the international campaign to win the 2024 Summer Olympics very differently Friday.

The French held a press opportunity at a glitzy brasserie with a view of the Eiffel Tower as it glowed and glittered in the projected five colors of the Olympic rings, and the new Paris 2024 slogan, “Made For Sharing,” appeared in the projection.

That was “Made For Sharing” in English only, in both the projection and on the Paris 2024 Facebook page, which has caused some consternation among the French, notably the Trumpian “Make France First” politician Marine Le Pen.  More on that later.

At the same time, the two leaders of the Los Angeles bid, chairman Casey Wasserman and CEO Gene Sykes, were doing a conference call with reporters.

The Paris 2024 press conference, which came only a few hours after an apparent terrorist attack at the Louvre, included the country’s prime minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, who pointedly said France wants to “build bridges, not walls.”

The L.A. conference call, which came just hours after reports that Iran was imposing what amounts to a tit-for-tat ban by prohibiting U.S. freestyle wrestlers from entering Iran for a meet, included Wasserman doing his best to do a tap dance worthy of Fred Astaire around the point Cazeneuve was making.

That point, of course, is that president Trump’s immigration and travel ban and his criticisms of Mexico, China, NATO, Australia, the Trans Pacific Partnership and whomever or whatever else Trump’s puppet master, Steve Bannon, wants to attack next are building walls the Los Angeles bid may find difficult to break down or bridge.

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Holding your breath as Vonn chases history by skiing right on the edge of crazy (and thoughts on other things Olympic, including 2024, Nathan Chen & Evgenia Medvedeva)

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Holding your breath as Vonn chases history by skiing right on the edge of crazy (and thoughts on other things Olympic, including 2024, Nathan Chen & Evgenia Medvedeva)

1.  Los Angeles has an excellent 2024 Olympic bid.  So does Paris.  So the idea of having the International Olympic Committee vote in September for both 2024 and 2028 rather than just 2024 makes absolute sense.  If both bids get to the day of reckoning in Peru, neither deserves to lose.

No one knows how the mechanics of an unprecedented IOC two-for-one deal might go.  It carries the slight risk of a huge upset if, as expected, the vote for 2028 would occur after that for 2024, because there is a third 2024 finalist, Budapest.

Sure, it is a) highly unlikely that Budapest could beat either Paris or L.A. head-to-head; and b) if Paris gets 2024, marking the centennial of its last Olympics, it is also unlikely that the IOC would choose to put two straight Summer Games in Europe (that hasn’t happened since 1948-52.)

Paris 2024 – LA 2028 is the best scenario, since it assures the Xenophobe-in-Chief will be out of office when Los Angeles is host – even if there is a chance the U.S. president who follows Trump will be equally deplorable.  (Or more deplorable, if that is possible.)

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`America First' the last slogan L.A. 2024 wanted to hear

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`America First' the last slogan L.A. 2024 wanted to hear

You can’t help but wonder what the voting members of the International Olympic Committee, whose charter seeks to place “sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind,” thought of the bombastic “AMERICA FIRST, AMERICA FIRST” message in the Xenophobe-in-Chief’s inaugural address last Friday.

You also can’t help but wonder if Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is pretty much the anti-Trump on every issue, has found a tailor to help him cut his conscience in a suitable fashion to continue currying the new U.S. president's support for his city's 2024 Summer Olympic bid.

And you also can’t help but wonder if the sickening idea that Marie Le Pen becomes president of France could boost L.A. 2024, given that Paris is Los Angeles’ chief rival for the 2024 Summer Games and Le Pen’s politics are even more offensively exclusionary and jingoistic than Trump’s.

You have to feel sorry that Los Angeles is saddled with a U.S. president who wants to build fences rather than bridges, to close our country rather than leave it open and welcoming, who uses slogans that recall World War II isolationism.  Why sorry?  Because the L.A. bid committee has done everything right since the city’s previous mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, told the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2013 that it was interested in the 2024 Olympics.

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In long term, radical change needed to reduce Olympic host burden

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In long term, radical change needed to reduce Olympic host burden

If the International Olympic Committee thought the bidding process changes in its Agenda 2020 reforms would end the negativity about being a host of the Summer or Winter Games, it has been sadly mistaken.

The frightening new financial projections about the cost of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games and Rome’s withdrawal from the 2024 race on financial grounds make it clear the IOC still has a long way to go in convincing citizens of democracies that being a host of the ever-more-bloated Olympic Games is worth the time, money and hassle.

 The italicized passage above was the opening of my Friday column, which dealt with short- and long-term solutions to a mess so bad that six of the 10 official candidates to be host of the 2022 Winter Games and 2024 Summer Games withdrew after formalizing candidatures – and another, Boston, dropped out before filing its paperwork.

In the short term – for the 2024 vote coming next September – I borrowed an idea from my colleague Alan Abrahamson, who posited that the IOC should award the next two Summer Games at the same time, with Los Angeles getting 2024 and Paris 2028.

I suggested that the order makes no difference (click here for that column).  The important thing is doubling down will give the IOC more time to sort out its future.

The long-term answer?  Dramatic changes should be considered.

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On Russia doping ban, it's an Olympic family feud

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On Russia doping ban, it's an Olympic family feud

Is there really an internecine battle going on between the international federation that governs the flagship sport of the Olympics, track and field, and the International Olympic Committee, which governs the Olympics?

Or is that federation, the IAAF, just grandstanding?

Those are among the questions without answers – and there are many such questions – after the IOC once again expressed its support for the IAAF’s actions in the Russian doping mess but refused to accept the most symbolically significant of those actions.

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