Let the Games Begin

The message from the rooftop Tuesday was that Los Angeles was back in the Olympic business. If they sold stock in this sort of endeavor and you had your broker do research, you would buy.

The message was that it was 4,252 days until the next Los Angeles Summer Games, scheduled to open July 27, 2012. That’s what the group of L.A. business and civic leaders were announcing, touting this city’s try for a third Olympics from a stage on the terrace level of Staples Center that offered a backdrop of skyscrapers and crystal-clear mountains. It was the day the Chamber of Commerce takes the brochure pictures.

But perhaps the real message wasn’t in the press releases handed out, nor was it uttered through the microphone manned at various times by Olympic bid leaders John C. Argue, David Simon, Rich Perelman, Brian McGrath and Mayor Richard Riordan. The real message might have been that it is more likely 1,326 days to the next Olympics in Los Angeles. That would put the opening ceremony Friday, July 23, 2004.

Yes, 2004. That’s when the Olympics are supposed to make their triumphant return to Athens, where they began their modern-day life in 1896.

It is not big news that there is trouble in Athens. It bid for the 1996 Games, and believed it had that bid locked up because of the obvious history. The feeling was that it was 100 years later and Baron Pierre de Coubertin would want it that way. A slam dunk.

Well, the International Olympic Committee took a look at Athens and its bid back then and gave the Games to, of all places, Atlanta. We all know how that turned out.

Time passed and so did another Olympics, a hit show in Sydney. Now, Athens is the host city for 2004, kind of a warm, fuzzy 108-year anniversary story.

But the effort toward 2004 has been, well, rocky in Athens. It got the bid mainly through the efforts of a bright, hard-charging woman named Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, who became so fed up with what was happening after her city was designated the 2004 site that, for a while, she took her torch and went home. When high IOC officials started looking in on Athens, they disliked what they saw. Soon, Angelopoulos-Daskalaki was back in charge, telling all, “The Olympics are Athens’ birthright.”

In Sydney, the spin was that Athens had turned the corner. Post-Sydney, events continued, however, mostly organizing committee turnover and controversy, that hinted all was still not 100% well in Greek Olympic circles.

Flash forward to Tuesday on the Staples Terrace. The message was that L.A. is ready, willing and eager to have an Olympics. Unsaid, although not unthought, was that it is ready now.

Athens is frantically building buildings and fixing roads and airports. L.A.’s buildings are built, and roads and airports are in place. Athens’ only Olympic track record is 104 years old; L.A. has done the Summer Games twice, as recently as 16 years ago, and has made money both times, $223 million in ’84.

Athens is in a TV time zone that is comfortable for NBC, which can get a nice mix of tape and live shows from Europe. L.A. is in a near-perfect time zone for NBC, which badly needs a mostly live Olympics to restore credibility after its twilight-zone, tape-delayed, what-day-is-it-now-and-who’s-on-first telecasts from Sydney. And don’t lose sight of the fact that TV pays most of the bills.

Certainly, the L.A. bid committee was not up there pushing publicly to relieve Athens of the Games. That would be stupid, as well as politically incorrect, maybe even suicidal for the 2012 bid. The L.A. organizers even went out of their way to wish the Athens effort well, and certainly meant it.

But their incredible attention to detail, their financial projections that figured a $96-million profit that was laughably low and they know it, and their clear message of readiness 12 years before the fact won’t be totally lost on any IOC member who may view Athens’ progress as less than acceptable.

Los Angeles has rescued the Olympic movement before, specifically in 1984, when the only other bid city, Tehran, dropped out. So, were the IOC to come and tug on the sleeves of Argue and Simon, they’d say, “Golly, gee, if we can help out . . . “

To be clear, the IOC has a lot at stake in keeping the 2004 Games in Athens. To do otherwise is a political nightmare. Also, Athens might finally start reacting to the magnitude of its situation and get it done. But if things do not look good in Greece next summer, along about the time IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch retires and takes with him all sorts of promises and commitments that his successors have less need to live up to, the IOC would have an out in giving Athens more time--say until 2012. And it would have a landing place.

Indeed, this might be Los Angeles’ best shot to get its Olympic three-peat. The 2008 Games are likely to go to China, because of the size of the country and the political need to finally get the Games there, with Paris and Toronto waiting in the wings. And should Beijing, indeed get 2008, and should Samaranch be replaced by Dick Pound, a Canadian lawyer who is one of the leading candidates, then Toronto has a leg up on Los Angeles for 2012.

That makes 2004 even more intriguing.

The Los Angeles bid committee’s presentation Tuesday was incredibly impressive for something 12 years in the distance. That alone makes it seem fair to believe that Los Angeles will get yet another Olympics, sooner or later.

The best bet might be sooner.