Los Angeles is about to become the third city to host the Summer Olympic Games three times, funnily enough (after London and Paris). Perhaps that’s not surprising considering the city’s unique renown, sports-mad population and ability to put on event of this size and magnitude. Still, LA has been a leader in many ways in terms of how the modern Olympics are planned, organized and presented.

From the 1932 Summer Olympics, held at the height of the Great Depression, to the 1984 Games, held at the height of the Reagan boom years, to the 2028 LA Olympics, in this more austere and environmentally-conscious era, Los Angeles has always delivered an amazing games. I see no reason why it should be any different this time.

In this article I’ll give you a brief(ish) history of the two Olympics previously hosted here and then look ahead to what Los Angeles is planning for the 2028 Summer Games.

The 1932 LA Olympics

Remarkably, every time Los Angeles has won a bid to host the Olympics it’s done so unopposed. Essentially, on each of the three occasions, no one else wanted them. The decision on which city to select for the 1932 Summer Games was made at an International Olympic Committee session in 1923, in Rome, when William May Garland, an LA real estate developer and IOC member submitted a bid. There being no others, Los Angeles won by default.

BACKGROUND

Over the previous fifty years Los Angeles had gone from being a small frontier farming town to being a bustling West Coast entrepôt, with huge reserves of oil. Then, over the decade before the meeting in Rome, the new tech industry – movies – had colonized the western suburbs of the city, and out of nowhere had become the fourth biggest industry in the U.S. Los Angeles was now rich and famous.

City leaders, like Garland, were more ambitious still for LA, they wanted the luster of the Olympic Movement to reflect on their shining new metropolis. Since the first trains of the Transcontinental Railroad had pulled into the city in 1876 the population had increased from about 5,000 to nearly a million by the early 1920’s. This meant that real estate was one of the biggest industries here, and businessmen like Garland were making a ton of money (he developed the Garland Building, home of the Globe Theatre, on DTLA’s Broadway).

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum had been completed in 1921, so LA already had an athletics stadium, but soon other buildings were being constructed, such as City Hall, in 1928. Putting on the games isn’t just about having the sporting venues, but showcasing the host cities themselves. Designed by John Parkinson, architect of the Coliseum, LA’s new City Hall rapidly became a landmark building and today is considered an icon of Art Deco design.

Of course, during the Roaring Twenties, when the U.S seemed to be an economic miracle, no one was concerned about the cost of the games. However, nearly three years before the games began, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the U.S., and then the world, into the Great Depression. Because of this the very sensible decision was taken to make use of existing venues as much as possible, in order to drive down costs.

Prohibition of alcohol was the law of the land throughout the 1920’s but, by 1932, it was being increasingly ignored and the amendment would be repealed the following year.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

When it arrived in Los Angeles 37 countries participated in the 1932 Olympic Games, down from 46 in 1928, and even then U.S. President Hoover didn’t attend. Probably because he was caught up in driving a small army of 20,000 destitute war veterans from the grounds of the Capitol, in Washington, he sent his Vice President, Charles Curtis, to do the honors.

Nevertheless Hollywood threw its arms open to welcome the world to Los Angeles. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford hosted 200 officials and dignitaries at their Beverly Hills mansion, Pickfair. Louis B Mayer, president of MGM and member of the Organizing Committee, welcomed athletes and luminaries to the studio’s lot in Culver City, where they would eat in the commissary seated next to Hollywood stars such as Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Norma Shearer. Many of the athletes were star-struck.

The games began with the opening ceremony at the Coliseum on July 30, and ran until August 14, 1932

One of the biggest sports stars of the 1932 Games was Babe Didrikson, who won gold medals in the javelin and the hurdles events. She also competed in the high jump and set no less than four world records. Helene Madison, a swimmer on the U.S. team, won three gold medals in freestyle events.

Unfortunately, before the games, Didrikson was involved in an ugly altercation with fellow athletes Tidye Pickett and Louise Stokes, both of whom were black. Didrikson didn’t want African-American athletes on the team so, ultimately, Pickett and Stokes were removed from the U.S. delegation and replaced by inferior white athletes. It’s a good illustration of how different the world was back then (or is it?).

Some athletes did distinguish themselves with their sense of justice though, such as British fencer Judy Guinness (a member of the famous Anglo-Irish family). She was initially awarded the gold medal in the individual foil but, in a noted gesture of fair play, she informed the judges that they had failed to count two hits achieved by her Austrian opponent Ellen Preis. Ultimately Guinness was awarded the silver medal.

The Japanese show-jumper Takeichi Nishi was another star of the games, winning gold in the equestrian event, with his horse Uranus. Sadly he was to die on Iwo Jima, just thirteen years later, in 1945, during the Second War battle on the island. To this day it’s the only medal Japan has ever won in the category.

In the end the USA topped the medal table with 44 golds (and 110 medals in total), with Fascist Italy coming second with 12 gold medals, and France third on 11.

TRANSPORTATION

Believe it or not, but by 1932 there were estimated to be a million automobiles in use within a hundred mile radius of the Olympic Stadium, so traffic was already a big concern for the organizers of the Los Angeles Games.

At that time, luckily, LA had the most extensive electric streetcar network in the world though, the Pacific Electric (the red cars) and Los Angeles Railway companies. Most spectators would use those to visit the venues, or they would take one of the buses that were running as often as every few minutes.

The public were urged:

To travel via the Big Red Cars (to ensure) no traffic worries, no parking nuisance or fees (and) money saving fares.

LA 1932 Olympic Games Organizing Committee

All the athletes would take a special bus to get to their event. According to the official report by the organizing committee,

Thousands of interested spectators visited the Olympic Village daily to watch the arrival and departure of the busses carrying the athletes.  The early morning hours, when busses were coming and going at an average of one every minute, attracted the most attention.

VENUES

The 1932 Los Angeles Games were the first to feature an Olympic Village. All the male athletes would stay at the same place, at a complex created in Baldwin Hills, on the West Side. The New York Times declared that the sprawling campus of two room dwellings, with post/telegraph office, small hospital, shops and a bank, was “the crowning touch” of LA’s preparations.

Garland proudly declared that at the village rich and poor would live in the same conditions, something that was extremely rare at the time. Especially in Los Angeles, where neighborhoods were clearly demarcated by strict covenants, which kept races and classes carefully segregated. Although many of the athletes thought the arrangements were “lovely”, the New York Times headline blared:

Prince and Butcher Live Side by Side: In Strange Olympic Village Class Lines and Distinctions Are Obliterated.

It was an early example of Los Angeles being considered too liberal and progressive it seems. However since then the Olympic Village has been a feature of every games, apart from the London Olympics, in 1948.

The female athletes all stayed at the Chapman Park Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, just a couple of blocks from the glamorous Ambassador Hotel. Fewer than 10% of the 1,332 athletes were female.

The only permanent facility that was built for the games was the Swimming Stadium, next to the Coliseum (the Olympic Village was a temporary venue). Now the stadium is planned to be a host venue for the 2028 Games (it wasn’t used in 1984).

The games made good use of existing facilities, such as the recently-completed Rose Bowl, and in other cases handed off facilities to organizations after the games to ensure their continued use (such as the Olympic shooting range in Elysian Park, which was taken over by the Los Angeles Police Department and is used for training).

Incredibly, especially considering the period in which it took place, during the depths of the Great Depression, with fewer nations taking part due to the straitened times, the 1932 LA Olympics actually turned a modest profit of around a million dollars (equivalent to at least $50 million now).

Everything was looking good for the following Olympics, due to be held in Berlin, Nazi Germany (who says sport and politics don’t mix :-) ). Ironically, the one thing Berlin managed to do better than Los Angeles was in making a film of the Olympics. Olympia, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, is considered one of the most influential sports movies ever made, as it had such a huge impact on the genre (although it’s obviously considered very controversial too).

The 1984 LA Olympics

By the mid 1970’s the Olympic Movement was in trouble again. The kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes by the terrorist group Black September at the Munich Games, in 1972, and the enormous cost of the 1976 Montreal Games, meant that there were no other cities bidding for the Olympics by 1978.

Once again Los Angeles won by default and you can almost say that, at a pivotal moment, the city would save the modern Olympics, and in doing so would reinvent it.

BACKGROUND

By the 1980’s the Olympics had become massively bigger, there would be over 150 participating countries. However in the run-up to the games the old Warsaw Pact nations, dominated by the Soviet Union, elected to boycott them. This was effectively because the U.S. and many of its allies had boycotted the previous games in Moscow, in 1980, over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. With the Cold War in full swing, the Olympics had become political again.

Los Angeles, also, was a lot bigger. The city now had a population of over 3 million people, and the larger Southern California region had many more millions. Freeways criss-crossed a region that had, only a few decades earlier, been covered in a patchwork of semi-rural residential districts, vineyards and fruit farms.

Because of the example of Montreal, in 1976, which had almost been driven to bankruptcy by the games (it would take the city many decades to pay off its debt), once again the very sensible decision was made to use as many existing facilities as possible, to drive down costs. As always, it was a smart move.

Attendant with the almost exclusive use of venues that had already been built, the organizing committee also made the decision to fund the games primarily with private, corporate, funding, i.e. via sponsorship. For example, the Swimming Stadium (one of only two venues built specifically for the Olympics) was funded by Mcdonald’s, which gained the naming rights to the venue for 25 years.

The Olympic torch was carried continuously by runners, as they crossed North America, unlike today. O J Simpson was one of the relay runners, and it was Rafer Johnson, winner of the decathlon at the 1960 Olympic Games, who actually lit the eternal flame. In doing so Johnson became the first ever person of African descent to light the cauldron.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

The 10 week Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival preceded the games, featuring 400 performances by 146 theater, dance and music companies, drawn from countries from every continent.

The Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles for a second time on July 28, and ran to August 12, 1984. This time the president did turn up for the ceremony, Ronald Reagan himself, the glamorous Hollywood president, formally opened the games. As part of the opening ceremony a man flew into the Coliseum on a jet pack. It seemed the perfect symbol of the technical prowess and limitless ambition (and optimism) of the U.S. at the time. It seems like an 80’s Hollywood movie.

In spite of the official boycott of the games by fifteen nations a record 140 nations participated in them.

Arguably the biggest star of the games was Carl Lewis, the American sprinter. He equalled the feat of Jesse Owens, in 1936, by winning four gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters, 4 × 100 meter relay and long jump. However, for various reasons (many of them unfair), Lewis was seen as a somewhat controversial figure. Nevertheless, Lewis had trained at the Santa Monica Track Club, in the Los Angeles area, so it almost felt like he was a local.

Another U.S. star of the 1984 LA Olympics was Mary Lou Retton, who became the first gymnast not from Eastern Europe to win the all-around gymnastics competition, although the absence of most the Eastern European countries due to the boycott did lead to questioning of her achievements.

There was big controversy though too. In the women’s 3,000 meter race South African athlete Zola Budd, who was representing the U.K. accidentally collided with the United States’ May Decker. Decker was knocked over and injured, retiring from the race, with Budd finishing seventh. Many viewers felt that Budd had tripped Decker, but Decker denied it and ultimately placed the blame upon herself. Still, it focused attention on Budd, who had her British citizenship fast-tracked so she could represent the country at the Olympics (South Africa was banned from the competition due to sanctions against its Apartheid government at the time).

In better news for the U.K. Sebastian Coe became the first man to win consecutive gold medals in the 1500 meter event.

By the end of the games the U.S. had finished first, with an incredible 83 gold medals (and 174 in total). It was the first Olympics since 1960 that the country had finished first. Romania, the one Soviet ally to attend the games, came second, with 20 golds (53 total), and the old West Germany placed third, on seventeen (59 total).

TRANSPORTATION

If there was one thing Los Angeles was famous for by the early 1980’s, other than entertainment, it was traffic. However there was very little of it during the games. Why was that?

Well, in spite of the 1984 LA Olympics being held during a period when the car really was king here, there being no metro rail lines at all in Los Angeles, in fact many spectators arrived at venues by public transport. Specifically by bus.

How did that happen? LA built a rapid transit bus system from scratch in just a couple of years, borrowing an extra 550 buses from local organizations for the games themselves. The system’s big test was August 3, known with true Los Angeles hyperbole as ‘Black Friday’, when two crowds of 90,000 each would be turning up to watch track and field events at the Coliseum, on top of other major events nearby, including a baseball game at Dodger Stadium. 

In the end there was hardly any congestion at all. LA had passed the test.

The city also heavily encouraged employers to allow employees to work flexibly for the two weeks of the games and banned trucks and deliveries from the roads during daylight hours.

VENUES

The 1984 LA Olympics were the first to feature a combined Olympic Village for male and female athletes (now up to about 25% of the males). No longer would athletes be divided by gender, or for geo-political reasons. The dorms and student rooms on the campus of University of California Los Angeles, on the Westside, served as the accommodation for the athletes.

Other than the Swimming Stadium, at University of Southern California at Exposition Park, all the other major venues were existing. The Memorial Coliseum got an upgrade, but it was still perfect for athletics. And Dodger Stadium was perfect for baseball.

Because of these factors, amongst several others, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics are considered to this day to be most financially successful games ever, making a profit of about $250 million. This was duly taken notice of by other big cities around the world, and before long many were bidding once again to gain the right to host the games. Did LA save the Olympics? A resounding maybe.

The 2028 LA Olympics

In July 2017, as the International Olympic Committee was deciding on the host city for the 2024 games, it found itself in a bit of a bind. All the other cities that were bidding had dropped out, apart from Paris and Los Angeles. Once again, due to the high cost of hosting (especially with the examples of Athens, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro over the previous years), potential host cities were less enthusiastic about bidding.

On July 31 the IOC announced that Paris had won the right to host the 2024 games (in the centenary year of its hosting them in 1924) and Los Angeles would host the 2028 Summer Olympics, like Paris, for the third time.

BACKGROUND

This time, just like in 1932 and 1984, the focus would be on using existing venues and getting spectators to use public transport. Although now it’s referred to as “sustainability”, with the motives being about the need to be “eco-friendly”, and there’s a lot of talk of “legacy”.

Nevertheless, although the buzz-words are new the principles are solid, and true. The games shouldn’t require billions of dollars of expense by host cities to build new venues, which immediately become useless after the two-week carnival leaves town. If that were to be a necessity only the very richest cities could bid, and the Olympics are supposed to be about sport bringing people together, not money bringing people together.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

At the closing ceremony for the Paris Olympics in August, the baton was handed on to Los Angeles, with Tom Cruise sky-diving down onto the Hollywood Sign, before heading off to a small concert on Santa Monica beach with his main man Snoop Dogg. So LA, right? It fits the myth – the reel – but maybe not the real Los Angeles. Which is way more interesting frankly.

I personally hope that the city uses the games to reinvent the public image of Los Angeles. Sure the LA’s famous, it’s probably the most well-known city in the world. Hundreds of thousands of visitors come here annually, eager to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Beverly Hills and the beaches, to take a trip to Disneyland. All of that’s great, but LA is soooo much more than those well-known features.

The problem is a lot of people don’t know it. They don’t come to LA looking for culture and history, even though we have tons of it here. This is the perfect time to rebrand Los Angeles, as not just being the capital of world entertainment, but a city steeped in a rich history (not, by any means, only of movies either), a vast salad bowl/melting pot (depending on your preference) of people and cultures from all over the world. With the great food that you’d expect as a result of that. LA is at the cutting edge of technology, research, design and art.

Maybe we can start to sell the world on that image, the real Los Angeles as it happens. It shouldn’t be an Olympian feat.

TRANSPORTATION

Today Los Angeles has the most ambitious metro rail system expansion program of any major U.S. city. By early 2026 Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) will finally get a proper connection to the LA Metro system, with a station at the airport (accessible by an automated monorail from the terminals).

By then the next phase of the D-Line extension, to Beverly Hills, will be complete, meaning curious visitors can take the subway to Rodeo Drive. By 2027 it should be extending out to Westwood, where the Olympic Village will be situated once again, at UCLA.

With these developments Los Angeles will reach a point where many significant parts of it are accessible by rail including, crucially, the airport. Hopefully this will lead to a significant increase in the number of people using it. I’m talking to you, fellow Angelenos!

Metro will also be doubling in size its current bus fleet in time for the games, planning on reselling the surplus buses after the Olympics are over to other agencies and organizations.

In August 2024, Mayor Karen Bass announced that LA is planning for the Olympics to be car-free. That was later slightly watered down by the organizers, who were probably over-reacting to the horrified response of some Angelenos to the announcement, to be a principle of ‘transit-first’ travel. But really it’s the only way to do it. If a hundred thousand spectators are added to the city’s roads, all at the same time, traffic would grind to a halt. Grid-lock would ensue. It has to be this way.

In any case, if the spectators all travel by public transport to the games, it means less traffic for Angelenos going about their daily lives, right?

VENUES

Los Angeles already has a ton of great, world-class, sporting venues, so it makes sense that the organizers would make full use of them. The Coliseum is now the first stadium to host three Olympic Games. How about that for experience?

The following venues have been provisionally picked to host events (although of course plans can change closer to the LA Olympics):

• 1. Memorial Coliseum: athletics and opening and closing ceremonies.
• 2. SOFI Stadium:: the biggest swimming stadium in Olympic history will be created in the stadium, with 38,000 spectators and parts of the opening and closing ceremonies are due to be held here too.
• 3. Intuit Dome: basketball (obviously).
• 4. Alamitos Beach: beach volleyball.
• 5. LA Dodgers Stadium: baseball (obviously).
• 6. Rose Bowl: soccer.
• 7. LA Live: weightlifting, gymnastics, martial arts and more.
• 8. LA84 Foundation/John C, Argue Swim Stadium: diving.
• 9. Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area: BMX biking and archery.
• 10. Long Beach Marine Stadium: rowing and canoe.
• 11. Long Beach Arena: handball.
• 12. Galen Center: badminton and rhythmic gymnastics.
• 13. Honda Center: volleyball.
• 14. Universal Studios: squash.
• 15.Santa Anita Park: equestrian
• 16. Venice Beach: triathlon, marathon and cycling road race.
• 17. Trestles (San Onofre State Beach): surfing.

For more information about the 2028 Olympics be sure to check their website here.

This map is interactive. To open in Google Maps click the icon in the top right corner.

Where Next for the Olympics?

In 2032 Brisbane is due to host the Summer Olympics, in a first for the city (both Melbourne and Sydney have already hosted the event). With Australia’s reputation for excellence in sports, as well as being well-known for having a suitably sports-mad population, it promises to be a memorable games and a worthy successor to the LA Olympics.

If you have any feedback on The LA Olympics: 1932, 1984 & 2028, please email us or reach out on social media, we’d love to hear from you.

– By Damien Blackshaw (Twitter)