LA 2024 to celebrate the New Year at the 2017 Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game

Media Advisory

January 1, 2017

LA 2024 to celebrate the New Year at the 2017 Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game

The Tournament of Roses' Rose Parade and Rose Bowl will take place on January 2, 2017, presenting a festival of flowers, music and sports that serves as America's New Years greeting to the world. Hundreds of thousands of spectators line the streets of Pasadena in Los Angeles County to watch the parade, joined by millions more watching around the world.

This year LA 2024 has partnered with the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board to produce the City of Los Angeles’ flower-covered "Follow the Sun" float celebrating the city's candidacy for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Top Olympic and Paralympic legends including American IOC Member Anita DeFrantz, Nadia Comaneci, Bart Conner, Lex Gillette, April Ross, Haley Anderson, Candace Cable, Dawn Harper-Nelson, Holly McPeak, Howard Shu and Sinjin Smith will ride the float on January 2, 2017 along with several young Angeleno athletes with the LA84 Foundation, the youth sports non-profit funded by the success of the 1984 Games.

Olympians and LA 2024 Athletes' Advisory Commission leaders Janet Evans, Allyson Felix and Greg Louganis are the Tournament of Roses Grand Marshals, and will ride in vintage cars behind the Follow the Sun float and will participate in the coin toss to kickoff the Rose Bowl college football game between Penn State and USC.

More than 500 volunteers have helped decorate L.A.’s "Follow the Sun" float, which brings to life the city’s iconic venues, endless sunshine and natural beauty. The landmark Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum stands tall at the front of the float, with a flame burning atop its cauldron, as L.A.'s new Olympic logo - LA 2024’s Angel - flies high above the Coliseum's famed peristyle. Live beach volleyball will take place at the float’s center in celebration of L.A.'s diverse recreational activities.

The Memorial Coliseum walls are decorated in lettuce seed to recreate a cement tone. More than 1,000 stems of Bird of Paradise border the sides of the structure. Stylized palm trees in crisp white coconut chips flank the float. The vibrant colors of the LA 2024 Angel Logo are featured in the electrifying colored rose gardens. More than 10,000 roses in various shades ombred from light yellow to hot pink run along the length of the float. Floral waves of white Alito roses, coconut chips, gypsophila and dendrobium orchids with light and dark blue iris, sinuata statice, and hydrangea blossoms set the stage for the live beach volleyball scene. More than 8,000 irises are used to create the ocean water with 300 pounds of crushed walnut shell used to depict beach sand. The sun is created with thousands of yellow and golden strawflower petals with accents of dehydrated red bell pepper and orange carrots.

Date: Monday, January 2, 2017

Time: 8:00 AM Pacific Time (Rose Parade)

2:00 PM Pacific Time (Rose Bowl)

Location: Pasadena, California (Los Angeles County)

LA 2024 livestream from atop the Follow the Sun float:

www.facebook.com/LA2024

Domestic and international parade broadcast information:

https://www.tournamentofroses.com/broadcast-partners

Television broadcast also available on ktla.com/live

The 2017 Rose Bowl college football game will be televised on ESPN.

More information available at https://www.tournamentofroses.com/

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