LA 2024 bid names former Olympic swimmer Evans vice chair
“We are totally committed to putting athletes at the very heart of our Games Plan, with a concept designed to optimize the athletes’ experience”.
“As a native Southern Californian and passionate supporter of bringing the Games back to the US for the first time in 28 years, I’m honored to join this team and will do everything I can to help LA’s bid”, Evans said.
United States Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun compared the two situations together, likening the Seattle Seahawks’ blunder at the end of the game to the failed 2024 bid from Boston. “Athletes are the stars of the show and in LA we know how to ensure that our stars take center stage”. It is competing against Rome, Paris, Budapest, Hungary and Hamburg, Germany.
But mostly, these speeches were to get members of the U.S. Olympic movement pumped again after a start to 2015 that Blackmun called “the most unsettling and challenging time in my professional life”.
Chairman Larry Probst said the USOC moved forward after the Boston bid tanked because it was encouraged by global colleagues who he portrayed as “surprised and disappointed (but) not discouraged”.
He praised leaders in Los Angeles for steeping in after Boston’s bid was withdrawn in July.
But Blackmun also said he owed an explanation to the hundreds of people at the assembly for the Boston debacle.
The USOC is trying to land the 2024 Summer Games for Los Angeles, which has hosted the Olympics twice before – in 1932 and 1984. Evans’ appointment signifies the bid’s commitment to keep athletes at the core of its overall bidding strategy, according to Wasserman. “We have to earn this, just like athletes do on the field of play, every day”.