`America First' the last slogan L.A. 2024 wanted to hear

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`America First' the last slogan L.A. 2024 wanted to hear

You can’t help but wonder what the voting members of the International Olympic Committee, whose charter seeks to place “sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind,” thought of the bombastic “AMERICA FIRST, AMERICA FIRST” message in the Xenophobe-in-Chief’s inaugural address last Friday.

You also can’t help but wonder if Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is pretty much the anti-Trump on every issue, has found a tailor to help him cut his conscience in a suitable fashion to continue currying the new U.S. president's support for his city's 2024 Summer Olympic bid.

And you also can’t help but wonder if the sickening idea that Marie Le Pen becomes president of France could boost L.A. 2024, given that Paris is Los Angeles’ chief rival for the 2024 Summer Games and Le Pen’s politics are even more offensively exclusionary and jingoistic than Trump’s.

You have to feel sorry that Los Angeles is saddled with a U.S. president who wants to build fences rather than bridges, to close our country rather than leave it open and welcoming, who uses slogans that recall World War II isolationism.  Why sorry?  Because the L.A. bid committee has done everything right since the city’s previous mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, told the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2013 that it was interested in the 2024 Olympics.

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In long term, radical change needed to reduce Olympic host burden

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In long term, radical change needed to reduce Olympic host burden

If the International Olympic Committee thought the bidding process changes in its Agenda 2020 reforms would end the negativity about being a host of the Summer or Winter Games, it has been sadly mistaken.

The frightening new financial projections about the cost of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games and Rome’s withdrawal from the 2024 race on financial grounds make it clear the IOC still has a long way to go in convincing citizens of democracies that being a host of the ever-more-bloated Olympic Games is worth the time, money and hassle.

 The italicized passage above was the opening of my Friday column, which dealt with short- and long-term solutions to a mess so bad that six of the 10 official candidates to be host of the 2022 Winter Games and 2024 Summer Games withdrew after formalizing candidatures – and another, Boston, dropped out before filing its paperwork.

In the short term – for the 2024 vote coming next September – I borrowed an idea from my colleague Alan Abrahamson, who posited that the IOC should award the next two Summer Games at the same time, with Los Angeles getting 2024 and Paris 2028.

I suggested that the order makes no difference (click here for that column).  The important thing is doubling down will give the IOC more time to sort out its future.

The long-term answer?  Dramatic changes should be considered.

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On Russia doping ban, it's an Olympic family feud

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On Russia doping ban, it's an Olympic family feud

Is there really an internecine battle going on between the international federation that governs the flagship sport of the Olympics, track and field, and the International Olympic Committee, which governs the Olympics?

Or is that federation, the IAAF, just grandstanding?

Those are among the questions without answers – and there are many such questions – after the IOC once again expressed its support for the IAAF’s actions in the Russian doping mess but refused to accept the most symbolically significant of those actions.

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Wagner, Gold resigned to morning skating at 2018 Olympics

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Wagner, Gold resigned to morning skating at 2018 Olympics

BOSTON - The news that figure skating competition would begin at 10 a.m. at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea left the two leading U.S. women singles skaters resigned to deal with situation, although Ashley Wagner adopted that attitude more grudgingly than 2014 Olympic teammate Gracie Gold.

“This is all fresh to me, and right now I’m annoyed, because it’s a difficult thing to ask the skaters to do,” Wagner said after her Tuesday evening practice before the World Figure Skating Championships that begin Wednesday at TD Garden.

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The Donald would be trump card for L.A. 2024 bid rivals

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The Donald would be trump card for L.A. 2024 bid rivals

Ten random thoughts about things Olympic:

1. No one may be more nervous after Donald Trump’s decisive win in the New Hampshire primary than the Los Angeles 2024 bid committee (and, by extension the U.S. Olympic Committee.)

Can you imagine what having a U.S. president who defamed Mexicans and wants to keep Muslims from entering the country would do to L.A.’s chances in the September 2017 vote for host of the 2024 Summer Games?

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