Wasserman: Los Angeles a 'Poster Child' for Agenda 2020

(ATR) Los Angeles 2024 bid chief Casey Wasserman says the bid’s presentation to International Federations on Tuesday will showcase one of the most sustainable projects in the modern Games.

"We take Olympic Agenda 2020 seriously and I think if there was a poster child for an Olympic Agenda 2020 bid it would be Los Angeles 2024," Wasserman tells Around the Rings on the sidelines of SportAccord in Aarhus, Denmark.

Wasserman believes Los Angeles can deliver sustainability in every aspect of its Olympic bid from financing to environmental impact and that its plans have been vetted by several independent parties.

"That’s a paradigm shift in terms of past bidding guidelines and we take that to heart," he said. "I’m fond of saying that the bid we delivered in February this year is the Games we will host in the Summer of 2024 and I think that’s unique in Olympic bidding."

Aside from its sustainability goals, Wasserman says LA 2024’s presentation to the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations on April 4 will focus on the benefits it could provide throughout the seven years leading up to the Games.

"Ultimately the federations are the organizers of sport and the sports that make up the Olympic Games, so our presentation is – how does an Olympic Games in Los Angeles help maximize the opportunity for those Federations and their sports," Wasserman tells ATR.

Wasserman will be joined by LA 2024 chief executive officer Gene Sykes, vice chair Janet Evans, IOC member Angela Ruggiero and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti during the presentation.

The presentation will be the bid’s second of four opportunities to explain their project to Olympic stakeholders before the IOC vote Sep. 13 in Lima, Peru. Leaders of the bids from Los Angeles and Paris will deliver 10 minute presentations via PowerPoint without any videos to aid their story.

"You can expect another chance for Los Angeles 2024 and its leadership to tell our story, it’s a story of what we think makes LA 2024 unique and LA 2024 the right bid for the Olympic Movement at this time," Wasserman tells reporters.

Los Angeles is only competing with Paris to host the 2024 Games after a bidding process that found three cities lacking in support to host the Olympics. The outcome continues a trend seen in the 2022 Olympic bidding race that also came down to two finalists.

In response, the International Olympic Committee has created a working group to study the feasibility of awarding both the Summer 2024 and 2028 Olympics to the remaining cities in the 2024 race. IOC president Thomas Bach is meeting with the Mayors of L.A. and Paris while in Denmark but Wasserman says talks with Mayor Garcetti did not focus on the possibility of hosting the 2028 Games instead of 2024.

"The meeting between the two of them was social, it is more process updates than anything else," Wasserman said, adding that he believes the IOC is moving in the right direction with the idea to award two host cities at once.

"I think the idea is the right kind of thinking for the IOC and I frankly commend them for taking the step of at least setting up a working group to explore it," Wasserman explained while remaining firm in the assertion Los Angeles is only interested in the 2024 Games.

Wasserman says he did not attend the meeting with Bach and Garcetti but that it lasted less than an hour.

The bid cities will remain in Denmark throughout SportAccord to meet with IOC members and other Olympic stakeholders as the race to host the 2024 Games enters its final months. The SportAccord Convention concludes on April 7.

Written by Kevin Nutley

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