How long until the start of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles? Casey Wasserman responds immediately — “1,487 days” — no need to think it over.
“It’s on my phone,” he says. “And I look at it every morning.”
As chairman of the private group in charge of staging the Games, Wasserman also knows there is much to do before then. He muses: “We can’t buy more time.”
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The clock is very much ticking for LA28, which will reach a critical juncture next month. Gone is the initial blush of being named host. Gone are the years of brainstorming over how to give the Olympics a distinctly Southern California feel.
If every local organizing committee has three lives — bidding, planning, delivery — now comes the third and most-difficult one. As soon as the 2024 Paris Olympics conclude in mid-August, L.A. will be next up, meaning organizers must get serious about meeting deadlines, sticking to budget and making tough choices.
“It’s a major reality check,” says Angela Schneider, a professor at the International Centre for Olympic Studies in Ontario, Canada. “They are really under the gun.”
The pressure of the moment is exacerbated by the fact that, as an organizing committee evolves, it must shift from one skill set to another.
Bidding requires people who can assemble a proposal and persuade International Olympic Committee members of its merit. Schnieder calls it: “Selling the dream.” If selected, the bid committee morphs into an organizing committee focused on planning and finance.
Architects design a detailed, often ambitious blueprint for the Games while marketers chase corporate money and government lobbyists help push for any infrastructure projects the host city might want or need.
“There is no such thing as all of this working seamlessly,” says Adrien Bouchet, who studies the Olympics as a business professor at the University of Central Florida. “Mega-events always go through these phases.”
The third — or delivery — phase officially begins when Mayor Karen Bass accepts the Olympic flag at the closing ceremony in Paris. LA28 isn’t waiting until then.
Though Wasserman remains in charge, several key staff members, including former chief executive Kathy Carter, a marketing expert, have departed as the committee retools.
Carter has been replaced with Reynold Hoover, a retired lieutenant general who oversaw logistics for the U.S. military’s war in Afghanistan and served as deputy commander for the U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo.
“It was an interesting hire,” says Michael Payne, a former IOC executive. “If you look at the profile of what you want, the massive complexity of big military is probably as close as you can get to Olympic delivery.”
Click here to read that full the full article in the LA Times
Want to bet that Slick and his minion as the mayor of LA have planned the destruction of much of downtown LA under the guise of the games?
I’ll bet the General does not come close to understanding the issue of shutting down streets, creating the idiotic political 15 minute city and what he has been hired to do.
LA Olympic organizers see the refurbishing of existing facilities to pull it off. They have not addressed the political game afoot by the high density zero car crowd that is already in action.
Good luck t the organization teams and the politics they are faced with.