L.A. could land Olympic Games, but which year?

LOS ANGELES — Leaders in Los Angeles will guide their International Olympic Committee guests from the Hollywood Hills to Santa Monica Beach to a construction site that will someday be a $2.6 billion NFL stadium that can also host soccer games.

If this week’s tour is a success, Los Angeles will earn the chance to host its third Olympics. But which Olympics? Officially, Los Angeles and Paris are the only two bidders left for the 2024 Games that will be awarded in September at a meeting of Olympic leaders in Lima, Peru. On the table, however, is a proposal to use that meeting to dole out the next two Olympics — 2024 and 2028 — one to each city.

IOC President Thomas Bach said he wants to avoid producing so many losers in the multimillion-dollar Olympic-bidding game. Unsaid is Bach’s need to avoid another bidding debacle, similar to the 2024 contest, if the rules remain the same for 2028.

The 2024 race began with five cities, but slowly, awkwardly, tapered down to two, after Rome; Hamburg, Germany; and Budapest, Hungary all pulled out.

And that’s not including the embarrassment the U.S. Olympic Committee suffered when its first candidate city, Boston, stepped aside because of tepid — or, some might say, barely existent — public support.

Like Paris, Los Angeles is sticking to the party line, insisting it is in the mix only for 2024.

“Los Angeles is the right city for 2024 at this important time for the Olympic Movement and is only bidding for 2024,” LA 2024 Chairman Casey Wasserman said.

The 2024-28 issue is hardly the only unpredictable factor in a bidding process that has grown more confusing, even as the number of candidates dwindled.