LA Mayor: Olympic Future Demands Bold Bids

(ATR) Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti says the key to succeed in Olympic bidding is to "be bold and be yourself".

"I think a lot of bids play it very safe and often present a momentary potential face of the city," Garcetti told Around the Rings at the final press conference of the 2024 IOC Evaluation Commission visit. "I feel like this is how we live our lives and who we are every single day so [the commission] could really get a sense of who we are."

The commission led by chairman Patrick Baumann spent four days in Los Angeles exploring all the city has to offer. From LA Dodgers games to thorough bid inspections and tours of the Los Angeles 2024 Olympic and Paralympic venues, Garcetti believes the bid provided the right combination of risk and reward to their IOC visitors.

"Look, it’s a risk to say ‘let’s go to UCLA as the Olympic Village’," he continued. "When we announced that you could feel an audible gasp of air from people. Now they’ve visited and they’re like ‘wow that’s the best village I’ve ever visited in my life’.

"So be bold, the future demands it but don’t be something that you aren’t and don’t present your city as anything different than what it is."

LA 2024 bid chief Casey Wasserman told ATR the changed evaluation commission process allowed for more of a conversation between the IOC and the bid.

"This was not one side interrogating the other, this was a dialogue," Wasserman said. "And all of us, from the Mayor down, got good feedback, good insights.

"They gave us lots of good feedback and I think they’ve learned a lot from our planning," he added. "I think everyone came away feeling really good about the dialogue, the conversations and how that can inform both our bid and bids in the future and this is a good blueprint I think for a working evaluation commission going forward."

As the IOC travels to France on Friday for their inspection of LA’s rival Paris 2024, the LA 2024 bid team will already be hard at work preparing for their next presentations to give to the entirety of the IOC.

LA and Paris will present to the IOC in Lausanne from July 11-12 before giving a final presentation to the members and International Federations at the Session in Lima, Peru this September where the 2024 host city will be chosen.

Garcetti says the conclusion of the evaluation commission visit feels like the bid is coming down the home stretch of an 18-month race with the finish line appearing over the horizon on Sep. 13. While the bid is close to the end of the campaign, Wasserman says much work remains.

"I would say it’s mainly more of the same, preparing for the next two presentations and making sure we are doing our job within the confines of the rules to be where we can be and to be able to tell our story," he tells ATR.

"Then we’ve got a dash to the finish in Lima."

Reported and written by Kevin Nutley in Los Angeles.

Forgeneral comments or questions, click here.

25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about theOlympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribersonly.