The road to Big Bear is somewhat equal to the road to Lake Placid, NY/Whiteface (ski area), which hosted the 1980 Olympics somehow (Also another one in the 1930’s IIRC, one of the few places to host 2 Olympics)
I’ve said for a while now that the IOC needs to bite the bullet and put out a bid for four cities/regions as follows:
Summer Olympics
- A city in the Western hemisphere (and probably in the US).
- A city in the Asia/Pacific Rim.
Winter Olympics
- A city in the Asia/Pacific Rim.
- A city in the Western hemisphere (and probably in Western Europe).
The selected cities would build world-class facilities and maintain them (the facilities could be used for World Championships/Cups, etc. in between hostings). Each city would host Games every 8 years. So:
- 2028 - Summer1
- 2030 - Winter1
- 2032 - Summer2
- 2034 - Winter2
Rinse and repeat.
The contract could be for 2, 3, or 4 hosted games in each city and then see where we are.
The Zakalwe Plan offers a good spread of sports hosted where the interest is. Recognizes both the traditional Olympic powerhouses (except Russia - fuck them) and the rising gaming/spending power of Asia and allows the hosts to have a longer period for ROI/cost recovery. And, last but not least, eliminates much of the waste of resources like occurred with Rio.
Sure, but we had far fewer athletes and events back then. I’m guessing they also had fewer spectators.
I could see something similar to how the NFL determines the Super Bowl site, there’s a few cities in the regular rotation that the NFL knows can host a Super Bowl easily and then have the occasional one off hosting sites.
It would take a lot for me to support a site in a country that doesn’t have a very strong economy, Brazil and Greece have a lot of problems that aren’t related to hosting Olympics, but the Olympics definitely didn’t help. From the Rio games, I remember the green swimming pool and lots of talk about street crime.
I’ve heard similar suggestions before; have no idea if the IOC has considered it. I think it might work better with rotations of three cities, one each in Europe, Asia/Pacific Rim, and North America.
One thing to consider is that the events in the Olympics do change. Traditional speed skating seem to be less popular than it used to be. If a city commits to building facilities that they expect to be used for a few decades, will the IOC commit to keeping the events in the Games for that long?
It might not have been so bad if they could have hosted multiple Olympics after spending a fortune to build all the venues.
Banc of California Stadium only seats 22k. It’d be really small for an Opening/Closing Ceremony. Sofi Stadium or Dodgers Stadium are likely better choices.
Any reason not to use the Coliseum again?
The opposite issue of Banc of California. It’s too damned big for a Winter Olympics ceremony. Though maybe it’s not that much bigger than Sofi - it looks like it though.
Interesting Sofi will be the Opening Ceremony location for the 2028 Summer Olympics held in LA while Memorial will be the main Closing Ceremony location.
Just the possibility of rain. Not frequent in LA but when it rains, it really rains.
All that being said the NASCAR Clash is happening at LA Memorial Colosseum right now and people are wearing short sleeves. That would look really weird for a Winter Olympics ceremony. Maybe hold it in the mountains lol
I think Opening Ceremony tickets are some of the hardest to get. I have a feeling they could sell out 77,000 seats.
(I checked Wikipedia to see what the capacity was. Looks like it lost about 16,000 seats in a recent renovation.)