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LA 2024 bid focuses on athletes with Carl Lewis, Greg Louganis on board

Carl Lewis 

LOS ANGELES — Having already met one of the International Olympic Committee’s criteria for Games bidding, Los Angeles 2024 organizers emphatically sought to meet another.

Yes, the Games they are proposing in eight years are designed to be sustainable. But the more than 25 current or former Olympians on stage at the Beverly Hilton — a collection that included Carl Lewis, Greg Louganis and Nadia Comaneci — showed organizers are taking to heart the athlete-centered approach now required of candidate cities.

The group was only part of the 53 members that will make up the athletes’ advisory commission, which LA 2024 announced at the U.S. Olympic Committee media summit on Tuesday. The all-star group of current and former athletes, who have combined for 216 Olympic or Paralympic medals with 142 of those gold, will give athletes a greater voice in the bid.

“LA 2024 has an opportunity to help the IOC and the IPC reimagine the Games for the future,” said nine-time Paralympian Candace Cable, who is vice chair of the bid. “That kind of opportunity doesn’t come along often. And I believe with all my heart that LA has a chance, just as it did twice before, to transform the Games and the movement.”

Led by vice chair Janet Evans, a five-time Olympic medalist, bid organizers are trying to satisfy Agenda 2020. That reform from the IOC seeks not only to create a more sustainable Olympics but also requires bids to be athlete-centered.

Already, LA 2024 has said that 97 percent of its venues are built, planned or temporary.

“In order for the Games to thrive in the future, we all know that we must make sure that future host cities are not burdened with unneeded and unaffordable infrastructure just for the Games. LA 2024 delivers on this perfectly,” said Angelo Ruggiero, a member of the IOC and vice chair of its athletes’ commission. “I think we’re allowed to now focus on the social legacy because we have those venues in place.”

LA 2024 will look to athletes to review venues, provide feedback about the bid and represent interests of athletes in the process.

Evans said the commission will lead athlete town halls around the country to give other Olympians and Paralympians a chance to provide feedback on the bid. That includes Lewis, who in 1984 was a star of the Games with four gold medals. He went on to win 10, but he said this city and its people evoke a “river of emotions” each time he returns.

“In the years since, I’ve not spent one day in Los Angeles without someone walking up to me and saying, I remember the Games,” Lewis said. “They understood how special that moment was, and they have celebrated every athlete from all around the world.

“If you can capture the spirit, which you have, of LA, along with all the other great assets of the bid, I’m excited and motivated to say that no city can beat us,” he added.

Organizers are hoping a collection of some of the best Olympian and Paralympians can help them beat out bids from Paris, Rome and Budapest, Hungary, and prove Lewis right.

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