LA2024 Welcomes IOC Evaluation Commission For Three-Day Visit
May 11, 2017
By Christian Radnedge
The International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission began their inspection of Los Angeles on Wednesday, judging the city’s effectiveness to host the 2024 Olympic Games.
The sun was shining on delegates and assembled media as they arrived this week for their three-day visit, which will then be followed by a similar visit to rival candidate city Paris.
Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, who was recently elected for a second term, welcomed the commission and said that his city’s bid was “no risk” as questions remain over the efficiency of staging the Games in difficult financial climates.
“We are not going to have a huge Olympic village that is going to be abandoned right afterwards,” Garcetti said. “We have UCLA, which is extraordinary, with beautiful rooms which can feed 10,000 people a day already. So we don’t have to work out any kinks.”
The IOC has set up a working group to examine the option of whether it would make sense to award the host of the 2028 Games at the same time as 2024 at the IOC session in Lima, Peru on September 13.
Garcetti said he would be open to the idea but insisted that LA should be preferred as the host for 2024.
The evaluation commission will be ferried around LA to inspect all the potential Games sites, including the LA Coliseum which was the centrepiece for the city’s two previous Olympics in 1932 and 1984.
“We are very well prepared, we are enthusiastic, we have been rehearsing, literally every minute is planned,” LA2024 chief executive Gene Sykes said.
IOC member Patrick Baumann heads up the evaluation commission team, who were treated to an LA Dodgers game on their first day in the city.
