Sports
After Paris Olympics shined, Los Angeles in 2028 brings new and returning sports, plus a fresh look
By GRAHAM DUNBAR
PARIS (AP) — The Olympics will always have Paris. Next up for the Summer Games: Los Angeles 2028.
The baton will be handed from one third-time Olympic host city to another at the closing ceremony Sunday in Paris, and much will be different in four years’ time.
New sports will make their Olympic debuts, picked by organizers in LA who also are bringing back others that left the program more than 100 years ago.
While Paris had the Seine River, LA has the Pacific Ocean and its beaches.
Paris’ unmatched historic buildings gave the city a cinematic look. LA’s streets are a living history of film and television.
Here’s a look at some things that will be different about the next Summer Games.
Which sports will be new at the Los Angeles Olympics?
Flag football, squash and obstacle racing. Yes, “American Ninja Warrior”-style obstacle racing, to replace the horses and pep up modern pentathlon.
Sports that get invited into the Olympics typically are played across the world. In the modern Olympics, however, they also must be wanted by the host city.
Flag football is a good fit for Los Angeles organizers, who last year told IOC members before they voted that it represents “the future and the tip of the spear for American football’s international growth.”
Squash will join tennis and badminton as racket sports at the Games. Could padel or pickleball one day follow?
Squash lost out in several previous campaigns and, like flag football, now goes Games to Games with no guarantee of staying for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
Modern pentathlon has been an Olympics staple since 1912 but often has seemed close to being ousted. Equestrian is being replaced as one of the five disciplines as requested by the IOC after a horse was abused in Tokyo three years ago.
In comes obstacle racing in LA, aiming to make the sport more accessible and relatable.
Gone for a century, back in LA
Lacrosse last was played at the Olympics in 1908, cricket not since 1900.
Both return in 2028 with eager support from Los Angeles organizers and in viewer-friendly short formats; Lacrosse in a six-a-side version, cricket in the aggressive, hard-hitting T20 version that does not require five days per match.
Lacrosse pays respect to the Indigenous roots of the sport: “It is truly authentic to the land we are on,” LA 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman said Saturday.
Cricket has been coveted to connect especially with the more than 1.6 billion people in India and Pakistan.
“They are going to be paying attention to the Olympics like they never have,” Wasserman said. Cricket surely will be kept in 2032 by Brisbane, which is home to one of the sport’s most storied venues.
Baseball and softball have perhaps the most unusual modern Olympics story: out after the 2008 Beijing Games, back in at Tokyo in 2021, out in Paris, back in LA. Well, Oklahoma City, in softball’s case.
Home to women’s softball in 2028 is Devon Park that stages the Women’s College World Series each year, about 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he’s open to allowing Major League Baseball players to participate in the LA Games, but significant challenges remain. Insurance policies for players like Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, whose contracts are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, may be the biggest sticking point.
Early opening, early closing
The next Summer Games start two weeks earlier than this one, with an opening ceremony on Friday, July 14.
There’s no river in LA to match Paris’ athlete parade on boats on the Seine, though it will use two stadiums instead of one: both SoFi Stadium and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will be in play.
That plan means flipping the schedule of the modern Summer Games.
Track and field is at the Coliseum — as it was in 1932 and 1984 — and now moves up a week, replacing swimming as the front-loaded anchor sport. That is because So-Fi must be converted into a spectacular temporary venue for swimming with seats for 38,000 fans. Races will move back into the second full week of action.
The July 30 end date in Los Angeles is the first time a northern hemisphere Summer Games will finish so early since the 1924 Olympics closed July 27 in Paris.
How will the Los Angeles Olympics look?
The Paris Olympics often looked incredible on screen. Los Angeles practically invented the look of modern cinema and television and is a creative hub of music and fashion.
The message here to LA is consistently: Don’t try to copy Paris.
“Paris is the most beautiful city in the world,” Wasserman said Saturday. “The 2028 Games will be authentically Los Angeles.”
The IOC’s head of Olympic broadcasting, Yiannis Exarchos, said LA “cannot redo a city (Paris) with a history of 500 years. LA speaks about the future, about new frontiers, about technology.”
Road events such as marathons and cycling can show “where a big part of the mythology of the 20th century has been created, because of Hollywood,” Exarchos said in an interview.
“This is where I am more intrigued. I find interesting to see how we can recreate the television geography of LA.”
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