Author Barry Sanders: L.A.’s the Place for 2024 Olympics
Imagine more than 6,800 of the world’s best athletes making their way to Los Angeles to compete for the top spot in their individual sports and games.
That was the scene of the 1984 Olympics. Barry Sanders, the chairman of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, helped negotiate the deal that allowed the Olympics to come to Los Angeles then, and he is trying to repeat such an event again in 2024 – on an even larger scale.
He shared his experiences with a group of 10 people who turned out to hear him Saturday at the Valencia Library.
Ronald Hopkins and his wife, Barbara Hopkins, who attended the talk on Saturday, said they were at the 1984 Olympics. Barbara Hopkins even has a personal connection to the Olympics as her sister is married to Rafer Johnson, the man who lit the ceremonial torch that year.
“It was all very secretive,” Barbara Hopkins said, adding that very few people knew he was chosen for the gig until that day.
Sanders wrote all about the process that went into the 1984 bid and the legacy it left in a book titled “The Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games.”
“The Olympic games are very important to Los Angeles’s history,” he said in an earlier interview with The Signal, stating that the entire region benefited from the Games.
The city was so fiscally conservative that it had a surplus of about $232 million by the end of the games, Sanders said. A good portion of the funds went to support the LA84 Foundation, a support organization for youth sports that continues to thrive even now.
“The most successful games that ever occurred were in Los Angeles,” Sanders said.
He noted that Los Angeles was really the only city bidding for the 1984 Olympics, but after Los Angeles’s success that year cities around the world have sought to hold the Games there.
“It’s a competitive process,” he said.
Currently, Sanders and an Olympic bid committee are working on a bid package for Los Angeles to host the 2024 Olympics.
They began preparations for the 2024 bid three years ago, just after Tokyo was announced as the host city for the 2020 games, he said, adding that the process takes so long because every single minute detail has to be considered and planned.
The decision for the 2024 games will be made next year, he said.
Nearly 90 percent of the people in Los Angeles support being the potential host city, Sanders said, citing many reasons why L.A. it should be chosen.
Additionally, all the infrastructure is already in place in the city when it comes to sports arenas and stadiums.
“You don’t have to build anything of significance,” he said.