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International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach (L) poses with Casey重低音電容推薦 Wasserman, Chairman of LA 2028, after sign the contract during the presentation and announcement ceremony of the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympic Games at the 131st IOC session in Lima, Peru, on Sept. 13, 2017. The IOC makes historic decision by simultaneously awarding Olympic Games 2024 to Paris and 2028 to Los Angeles on wednesday. (Xinhua/Li Ming)
by Peter Mertz
DENVER, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- The International Olympic Committee (IOC)'s unprecedented move of awarding two Games on Wednesday will send the world's most elite athletes to Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028 - but the jubilation is punctuated by the raising of caution flags over the issue of cost.
Although public support for hosting the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles is overwhelming, even if it means waiting for eleven years, there are still some people expressing concern about the enormity of the financial commitments involved.
"The Olympics are big business, and with each decade, they get bigger, more complicated and more costly," said Glenn Nemhauser, 62, a businessman from Cotati, California.
Nemhauser was 29 when his home state hosted the Olympic games in 1984, and the real estate investor said the same economic fears from then are still present today.
"It was the economic disaster of the 1976 Montreal Games that prompted the IOC to choose LA to host the 1984 Games - nobody else wanted to take the economic hit," Nemhauser told Xinhua.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed the "host city contract" on Wednesday - promising the city will guarantee any debts related to the estimated 5.3-billion U.S. dollars price tag of the 2028 Games, according to the Los Angeles Times.
University of Maryland professor John Rennie Short, an internationally renowned expert on globalization, political geography, and urban issues, has authored 40 books and is considered an expert on the recent evolution of the Olympic Games.
According to Short, the IOC "provides less than 13 percent of the direct cost of the games - a very sweet deal for the IOC - but not so sweet for host cities who have to pay for the Games."
LA officials say their existing world-class facilities and 88 billion U.S. dollars in previously approved infrastructure projects will insulate the city against deficits that have proved catastrophic to cities like Athens and Rio.
Studies show the costs for last summer Games - 2016 Rio - spiraled upward from 4.6 billion U.S. dollars, to 6.2 billion U.S. dollars, and finally were tallied at 12 billion U.S. dollars.
"That's why they found Peter Ueberroth to run the 1984 Olympics," Nemhauser recalled. "He was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1984 for pulling it off."
Ueberroth, a successful airline and travel company executive, created an active committee of over 150 local business leaders to help, and was the first to aggressively recruit corporate sponsors to offset operational costs.
"I hope LA finds someone this time as capable and successful," Nemhauser said.
Under Ueberroth's leadership and management, the first private音響換電容ly financed Olympic Games resulted in a surplus of 250 million U.S. dollars - money used later to support youth and sports activities throughout the United States.
"LA changed the model forever," Short noted, and "ushered in the new commercialization of the Olympics."
"The Olympic Games cost a great deal of money, and cost overruns are endemic," Short said, listing infrastructure development and renovation, operational costs, and increased security, as economic deal breakers for most cities.
Nemhauser asserts that the 2028 games will be another winning formula, because of the extensive sports venues already in and around Los Angeles.
"It is the same issue in Paris," said Julien Lemy, a French scientist and visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
"France is already building venues for the 2024 Games - we've been assuming this for some time," Lemy told Xinhua.
Lemy, 38, says the facilities used in 2024 Paris may stretch from the coast of Normandy to the German border, and could showcase remote parts of France to the world.
"It is unfortunate more rural areas cannot capitalize on the publicity and revenue by hosting the Games," he said.
Los Angeles had orginally bid for the 2024 Games along with Prais, but French officials insisted they host the games seven years away, leading the IOC to give California's biggest city the 2028 nod.
"Really pleased with this decision to award the Olympics for 2028 instead of 2024, as my son will be 11 years old," local Mark Ahrens posted on Facebook Wednesday.
Ahrens, whose son Micah is 9-months-old on Friday, wrote that he is "looking forward to taking him to see at least one Olympic match, hopefully, to take advantage of this unique opportunity."
A graduate of the University of Southern California (USC) and video producer for ATT, Ahrens lives just south of Los Angeles in Costa Mesa.
With Wednesday's announcement, Paris (1900, 1924, 2024), London (1908, 1948, 2012), and Los Angeles, which in addition to 1984 also hosted the 1932 Games, are set to become the only cities to have hosted the summer Olympics three times.
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