L.A.’s Ready for Close-Up

No detail has been overlooked.

From the length of its slide show--comprehensive but not tedious--to the type of chocolate served for dessert--rich but not extravagant enough to seem self-indulgent--the LA2012 Bid Committee has meticulously planned how to best portray itself and the area when it entertains the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Site Selection team.

The eight-member USOC delegation will arrive today at John Wayne Airport for its eighth and final survey of U.S. cities bidding to host the 2012 Summer Games. It will begin by inspecting Orange County venues, followed Friday by a half-day tour of Los Angeles venues. It will spend Saturday morning in Long Beach. Business meetings will follow the Friday and Saturday tours.

The delegation will make its only public comments at a news conference Sunday. Reporters will be allowed to follow the delegates each day but won’t be allowed to interview them or ask them to pose for photographs.

“I think we’re well prepared for this visit,” said David Simon, president of LA2012 and the Los Angeles Sports Council. “It’s just like preparing for the Games.”

Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Tampa, Fla., and Washington have already stated their cases, and Simon hopes going last will make LA2012’s bid more memorable.

The USOC’s board of directors will narrow the field to three or four by the end of this year and to one by the fall of 2002. The International Olympic Committee will choose the overall winner in 2005.

“I’m sure that in talking to any city they’d say, ‘We went first and we think that’s an advantage,’ ” Simon said, “but we think we’ve benefited from having a longer time to prepare and look through media reports from the other cities.

“My attitude toward this visit is that cities are put through heats. They don’t give out gold medals for heats, but we want to get to the round where they give out the gold medal.”

Besides the venue tours, the delegates will hear presentations from LA2012 officials. Topics to be covered Friday are general infrastructure, sports infrastructure, sports event experience and international strategies. Saturday’s session will cover government support and public opinion, general housing and village plan, transportation and financial plan and guarantees.

Southern California Olympians and venue executives will greet delegates at each stop. Ann Meyers Drysdale, a 1976 basketball silver medalist, will speak at the Pond, the proposed basketball venue. Rafer Johnson, the 1956 decathlon silver medalist and 1960 gold medalist, will be at the Coliseum; his daughter, Jenny Johnson Jordan, a Sydney beach volleyball Olympian, will be at UCLA, site of volleyball, tennis and the Olympic Village. Others on hand will be Sydney softball gold medalist Leah O’Brien Amico and 1960 wrestling gold medalist Terry McCann.

The USOC has examined each city’s bid documents. LA2012 had to make only minor revisions.

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“The city we select needs to be able to win the Games,” said Bob Condron, the USOC’s director of media services. “We’ll know better which one that is Aug. 26. We have to look at which is the best city? Which are the best venues? Which has international mystique?”

Amenities provided to the site survey team are not pertinent.

Delegates will hear LA2012’s presentations in a hotel meeting room, not a ballroom. They will ride in a bus, not limousines. They won’t be wined and dined and housed in palatial suites. Such is life after the Salt Lake City vote-buying scandal and the USOC’s imposition of rules prohibiting expensive gifts or elaborate events for site selection surveys.

Only after a debate did LA2012 decide to design and distribute caps with its logo, remembering to keep their value below $10.

“We tell them up front we don’t want a lot of cocktail parties and bands meeting us and demonstrations of love,” Condron said. “There will be one reception, but, most of the time, it will be a working situation. It’s a lot of hours and a lot of days and not much time in between. It’s pretty intensive.”

Condron said site selection team members are chosen for their varied expertise, which helps them notice potential shortcomings in each bid.

“When they’re discussing where the backup locker room for judo should be, they know what they’re talking about,” he said.

The bid’s key drawback is also its biggest strength: Los Angeles has twice hosted the Games, in 1932 and 1984. Having that experience is desirable, but the USOC or IOC might feel compelled to spread the Games around.

The area’s world-class venues are another advantage. The only permanent site to be built would be for shooting, at the Fairplex in Pomona; a temporary pool would be built for aquatic events in Long Beach, following a model that was revolutionary when it was introduced in 1984 for warmups but is standard now.

Jay Flood, a Santa Monica architect who was in charge of aquatic events in 1984 and is planning 2012 aquatic events, was on the site selection committee that chose Atlanta as the U.S. bid city for the 1996 Games.

Based on those experiences, he believes delegates will see that Los Angeles is better prepared than in 1984, when the Games were a logistical and commercial success.

“The Olympics have added some events since then and there have been a lot of changes since ‘84, but we’ve also got better venues since then and we’re skilled in event management,” he said.

“We can support all their technical requirements. It’s all about L.A.--the infrastructure, the freeways, airports and whether there are sponsorship opportunities. There are just a lot of positives that are here, not withstanding this being the entertainment capital of the world.”

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In the Running

Cities bidding to become the U.S. nominee to host the 2012 Summer Games:

U.S. Cities Bidding

* Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Tampa, Fla., and Washington.

International City Bids

* No country has picked the one city to represent it on the international level and compete against the U.S. winner.

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Looking Ahead

Sites of future Olympics:

2002 Winter--Salt Lake City

2004 Summer--Athens

2006 Winter--Turin, Italy

2008 Summer--Beijing

2010 Winter--TBD in 2003

2012 Summer--TBD in 2005