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Olympics Blog

It’s Philadelphia love

By Helene Elliott
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PHILADELPHIA -- A major sports event can often get swallowed up when it’s held in a big city. For example, the two games played by the Kings and Ducks to open the NHL season in London last year caused hardly a ripple in the media or among local sports fans.

The Eagles were featured on at least one local sportscast Thursday night, but the U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials have had some noticeable impact. Banners celebrating the event have been placed on local streets, and the Convention and Visitors’ Bureau organized gymnastics demonstrations to give residents a peek at what they’ll see on the gym floor.

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The USA Gymnastics National Congress and Trade Show is also being held this weekend, so there are a lot of folks with name tags and USA Gymnastics backpacks wandering around Center City. They’ve blended in with the bustling lunch-hour crowds at the Reading Terminal Market.

-- Helene Elliott

Olympics Blog
Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

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