Los Angeles was to announce its bid for the 2012 Summer Games Tuesday.
The city has hosted the Olympic Games in 1932 and l984, and to date no city has been the site for the Olympics more than twice.
The key to the L.A. bid is its existing facilities. Ready to go now are a host of world-class venues, including several built since the l984 Games such as Staples Center and the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim. A few sites in Southern California would need renovation. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum would need to be fitted with a running track. But only one facility of 33, a shooting range, would have to be built from scratch, at organizing committee expense. Los Angeles bid officials promise a privately financed Summer Games and predict a financial and logistical success.
Bids are to be submitted by December 15, the U.S. Olympic Comittee will make its choice in the fall of 2002, and the IOC is scheduled to pick the host city in the fall of 2005.
If the vote for 2012 were today, any American candidate would have a slim chance of prevailing since anti-U.S. sentiment remains considerable in the IOC because of the Salt Lake City scandal.
Mitt Romney, head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee predicted that the Olympics will not return to the United States for more than 20 years after the 2002 Games. He said there’s “not a prayer” the U.S. will get the 2012 bid, not because of the corruption scandal but because cities such as Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur and Beijing now have the infrastructure and financial ability to stage the Games, which they previously did not.
