Los Angeles —
It’s Los Angeles’ turn for the torch. Mayor Karen Bass accepted the Olympic flag at the Paris closing ceremony Sunday, before handing it off to a key representative of LA’s local business — Tom Cruise — who in a pre-recorded trek via motorcycle, plane and parachute kicked off the countdown to 2028.
The city will become the third in the world to host the games three times as it adds to the storied years of 1932 and 1984. Here’s a look forward and back in time at the Olympics in LA.
LA’s Olympic trilogy
Los Angeles got the 2028 games as a consolation prize when Paris was picked for 2024.
Back in 1932, LA hosted its first Olympics. The city was the only bidder for the games at a time marred by the Great Depression and the absence of several nations. Yet memorable sport moments came from athletes including American athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who won golds in the new women’s events of javelin and hurdles.
FILE – Some 1200 helium balloons are released into the air from the field of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, July 28, 1984 as part of the opening ceremony for the XXIII Olympics.
Financial and cultural success gave 1984 a reputation as the “good” Olympics” which made seemingly every major world city want their own.
Emphasizing both the modern and the classical with a hand from Hollywood, the games opened with decathlon champion Rafer Johnson lighting the torch, a guy in a jetpack descending into the Memorial Coliseum and theme music by “Star Wars” maestro John Williams.
With Eastern Bloc countries boycotting, the U.S. dominated. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton are among the athletes who became household names. A young Michael Jordan led the men’s basketball team to gold.
The games renewed, for a while, the global reputation of a city that had been perceived to be in decline.
“We want our games to be a modern games, youthful, full of the optimism that Southern California brings to the world and the globe,” Janet Evans, four-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming and chief athlete officer for the LA 2028 organizing committee, told The Associated Press in Paris.
Passing the torch
Bass, who arrives back in LA Monday, spent these games in Paris along with organizers and city officials, learning what it takes to host the world’s largest sporting event.
Tom Cruise, right, is handed over the Olympic flag from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, left, during the 2024 Summer Olympics closing ceremony at the Stade de France, Aug. 11, 2024, in Saint-Denis, France
Joining her were LA28 Chairperson Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive, and LA councilmember Traci Park, chair of the city Olympic committee.
“As we’ve seen here in Paris, the Olympics are an opportunity to make transformative change,” Bass said at a press conference ahead of the closing ceremony.