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Los Angeles Leads America’s Olympic Hopes

The United States Olympic Committee said Wednesday that if it makes a bid for the 2024 Summer Games, Los Angeles will carry the flag.

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Because there won’t be as many large projects, chairman Larry Probst feels a Los Angeles bid is more in line with the less-extravagant Olympic model IOC President Thomas Bach outlined in his recently released Agenda 2020 reforms. It showed 81 percent support for hosting the Olympics.

“I was very happy to see the level, the readiness and preparation by each and everyone involved”, she said. “They are very good on the sport field because that’s the only area that they can really excel at, everything they have they put into that so it’s very important for them to excel there but it’s also important for them to socialise with others…It’s huge”.

“I have been competing in Special Olympics for about six years”, the Littleton resident said.

Williams said a member of his swimming team was able to beat his best record by 40 seconds, “because he was in the atmosphere of competition”.

“The Board authorised CEO Scott Blackmun to work with Los Angeles to explore the viability of a potential bid for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

Instead, he is focused on the success of the current Parapan Am Games, and said any further discussion about a possible Olympic bid would take place after the close of these Games.

Los Angeles bid for 2012, though the USOC named New York the US city.

That is because of one of the legacies of the 1932 LA Olympics: The Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, an organization founded in 1939 to offer LA as an alternative to Tokyo as host city for the 1940 Olympics, according to Simon and the committee’s web page. At least two other cities that weren’t finalists also reached out to the USOC after Boston pulled out.

Apparently, Los Angeles has no problem about that and are ready to make a run at returning the Olympics to the West Coast for the first time since the 80s.

Los Angeles does not have the luxury of time, but it does not face the two hurdles that ultimately toppled Boston.

After four different candidates from Europe bidding for the 2022 Winter Games dropped out, mostly because of concerns over costs, the IOC was left with a choice between unlikely bids from Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, before finally settling on the Chinese capital.

Los Angeles would join Rome, Paris, Budapest and Hamburg, Germany in the contest.

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The 2024 Olympic host city will be selected by the IOC on September 15, 2017 in Lima, Peru.

Special Olympics athletes 'all winners'