Los Angeles Selected as the Host City for 1991 Olympic Festival

No, the U.S. Olympic Committee hasn’t forgotten Los Angeles.

Nearly three years after the most prosperous Olympic Games in history, the USOC’s site selection committee Saturday named Los Angeles as host city for the 1991 U.S. Olympic Festival.

Minneapolis-St. Paul was picked as the event’s 1990 site by the committee, which also heard hourlong presentations by Detroit, Washington, Orlando, Fla., and San Antonio before making its choices.

The selections still must receive final approval from the USOC executive board by mail vote in June, but that is only a formality.

“We’re glad to say the Olympic spirit still is fresh and alive in our city,” Mayor Tom Bradley told the committee to lead off the Los Angeles pitch. “This will let us help to preserve and revive that spirit.”

USOC officials had feared the possibility of Los Angeles trying to match its huge 1984 effort. Those concerns melted as Bradley, bid chairman David Wolper and others delineated specific plans and limitations.

“Our plans are simple,” Wolper said. “This event will be Olympic style without Olympic size.”

Harry Usher, former general manager of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, soothed any worries about the planned Festival budget of $8.34 million, far more than any other candidate city.

“To borrow a term the Lakers might use, this budget is a slam-dunk,” Usher said. “We can produce a surplus without any fear. The important item that distinguishes us from the other cities is that we have done it before, and we’ve done it with a 12-million population.”

Los Angeles also impressed the USOC by projecting break-even status even if just 41% of available tickets are sold, by planning an average price of $6.70 per ticket, and by promising to turn over 100% of any profits to the USOC.

No other city was willing to commit all profits to the Olympic Committee.

USOC leaders also felt Los Angeles would best prepare athletes for the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain, and in the process set high standards for future festivals.

“Obviously, Los Angeles has the most superior facilities, not only in this country but in the whole world,” said Bob Kane of Ithaca, N.Y., former USOC president and currently chairman of the group’s Olympic Festival committee. “We’re convinced the Festival can reach for new horizons by being there, and the people there already have shown us in 1984 how wonderfully they respond to every challenge.”

The 34-sport Olympic Festival began in 1978 at Colorado Springs, costing the USOC less than $1 million, and it was called the National Sports Festival until last year. The event in Los Angeles will be its first appearance west of the Rockies.

With four years to prepare and no construction needed for any competition sites, the 1991 organizers do not plan to move quickly in activating a full-time staff. They hope the national exposure for intervening festivals, starting with the 1987 event July 13-26 in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C., will help awareness of the Olympic Festival in Southern California.

“When people there find out this event won’t clog the freeways, that they can walk from one event to another, and that the ticket prices allow you to take the entire family, they should jump all over it,” said Rich Perelman, former LAOOC vice president for press operations and now on the 1991 advisory committee. “Calling it a festival describes more of what will happen. The better athletes will come, too, because it’s the year before the Olympics and because it’s Los Angeles.”