On the first day of a two-day evaluation of Los Angeles by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) in its bid to become the U.S. candidate for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, a report by city officials presented to the USOC evaluation team said most of the venues needed for the 2016 Games are already built and the area has “near perfect weather with virtually no chance of rain”.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told a press conference ahead of today’s meeting at the University of California in Los Angeles, “this is a city that has the housing, the venues, the will”.
Thirty-five of the 36 permanent venues needed for the Games have already been built. The report said UCLA’s campus would be the site of the Olympic Village where athletes would be housed during the Games, as well as some sporting events.
There are 36 venues to be used for Olympic events, not including city streets that would be used for marathons and triathlons. A shooting range would be constructed at an already-selected site in Pomona, according to the Los Angeles 2014 bid committee.
Thirty of the 35 existing sites have most or all of the needed infrastructure in place and 10 of the venues have been built in the past decade, said the committee. Only nine of the 28 facilities used during the 1984 Olympics are being proposed for use again.
The Los Angeles 2016 bid team said the city should be awarded the Games “because, for the first time in Olympic history, the focus of an entire quadrennial will be on athletes and their achievements, rather than on how and when the Games architecture will be completed”.
According to the report more than 90 percent of Angelenos either came from outside the city or are the children of people who have moved there. The Mayor said, “every single Olympic delegation will have a fan base here”.
Friday the evaluation committee is scheduled to tour venues around the Los Angeles area, including Home Depot Center in Carson and Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.
