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PARIS, Aug. 12, 2024 (AP) — The Olympics will always have Paris. The next Summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles in 2028.
On Sunday, at the closing ceremony in Paris, the baton passed from one city hosting the Olympics for the third time to another, and four years later, things would be very different.
New sports will debut at the Games, chosen by organizers in Los Angeles, while others will be reinstated after being dropped from the Games more than a century ago.
Paris has the Seine, while Los Angeles has the Pacific Ocean and its beaches.
Paris’ unparalleled historic architecture gives the city a cinematic look. The streets of Los Angeles are a living film and television history.
Let’s take a look at some of the things that will be different at the next Summer Olympics.
What new sports will be added to the Los Angeles Olympics?
Flag football, racquetball and obstacle course racing. Yes, American Ninja Warrior-style obstacle course racing to replace horses and breathe life into the modern pentathlon.
The sports invited to participate in the Olympics are usually global. But in the modern Olympics, these sports must also be popular in the host city.
Flag football is a natural fit for Los Angeles organizers, who told IOC members before last year’s vote that it represents “the future and vanguard of the international development of American football.”
Squash will join tennis and badminton as a racquet sport at this year’s Olympics. Will padel or pickleball be added in the future?
Squash has failed to make the previous Olympics and now, like flag football, is relegated to one Olympics after another, with no guarantee of a place in Brisbane in 2032.
Modern pentathlon has been a staple at the Olympics since 1912 but often seems to be sidelined. After a horse was mistreated at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, the International Olympic Committee called for equestrian to replace it as one of the five sports.
The obstacle course race was held in Los Angeles in an effort to make the sport more accessible and visible.
A century away, back to Los Angeles
Lacrosse last appeared in the Olympics in 1908, while cricket has not appeared in the Olympics since 1900.
Both events will return in 2028, with strong support from Los Angeles organisers, and will feature the shorter formats that spectators love: lacrosse will be a six-a-side version, and cricket will be an aggressive, high-powered T20 version that doesn’t require five days per match.
Lacrosse honors the sport’s indigenous roots: “It really speaks to the authenticity of the land we’re on,” Casey Wasserman, president of the 2028 Los Angeles Winter Olympics, said Saturday.
Cricket has always been loved by more than 1.6 billion people in India and Pakistan.
“They will be paying attention to the Olympics like never before,” Wasserman said. Brisbane will certainly retain its cricket venue in 2032, one of the sport’s most famous venues.
Baseball and softball have perhaps the most unusual modern Olympic stories: They were suspended after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, returned to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, stopped in Paris, and returned to Los Angeles. Softball was suspended at the Oklahoma City Olympics.
The home field for the 2028 women’s softball team is Devon Park, which hosts the Women’s College World Series each year and is about 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he’s open to having MLB players participate in the Los Angeles Olympics, but significant challenges remain. Insurance policies for players like Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, who have contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, could be the biggest sticking point.
Open early and close early
The next Summer Olympics will begin two weeks earlier than this one, with the opening ceremony taking place on Friday, July 14.
Los Angeles doesn’t have a river to rival the parade of athletes on the Seine in Paris, though the Los Angeles Games will use not one but two stadiums: SoFi Stadium and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will both be involved.
The plan would mean a radical change to the modern Summer Olympics schedule.
Track and field events are held in the Coliseum – as they did in 1932 and 1984 – but now they are moved up a week, replacing swimming as the premier finale. This is because So-Fi had to be transformed into a spectacular temporary swimming venue that can accommodate 38,000 spectators. The competition will return for a second full week of competition.
The Los Angeles Olympics ended on July 30, the first time a Northern Hemisphere Summer Olympics ended so early since the 1924 Paris Olympics, which closed on July 27.
What will the Los Angeles Olympics be like?
The Paris Olympics often look incredible on screen. Los Angeles is practically the birthplace of modern film and television, and a creative hub for music and fashion.
The message here to Los Angeles is always: Don’t try to be like Paris.
“Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. The 2028 Olympics will be the real Los Angeles,” Wasserman said Saturday.
Ioannis Exarchos, the International Olympic Committee’s director of Olympic broadcasts, said Los Angeles “cannot reinvent a 500-year-old city (Paris). Los Angeles is about the future, new frontiers and technology.”
In an interview, Exarchos said road events such as marathons and cycling could show that “a large part of the mythology of the 20th century was created by Hollywood.”
“That’s what I’m most interested in. I’m curious about how we can recreate the geography of Los Angeles for television.”…PACNEWS
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