‘84 Games Laid Foundation for Opportunity

Long after the next Olympics are held in Los Angeles--whether in 2012 or decades later--young athletes will benefit from the profits generated by the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

The Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, formed in 1985 with a 40% share of the Games’ $232.5-million profit, last week announced grants of $2,561,171 to local youth sports programs. Through grants and its own programs, the AAF has spent more than $110 million throughout Southern California to equip kids, pay their activity fees, hire coaches and teachers to instruct them, buy them ice time or court time, provide places for them to play or improve existing sports facilities.

Although the foundation wasn’t created to produce Olympians, several have benefited from its grants, including speedskater Rusty Smith and Sydney water polo silver medalist Brenda Villa. So have a number of cyclists and volleyball players. Venus and Serena Williams got their first exposure to tennis through a program funded by the AAF. Other aspiring Olympians, like junior speedskating standout Maria Garcia, have been helped directly or indirectly by the AAF.

“The real premise of the foundation is to introduce youngsters to sports and give opportunities to those already involved to continue to play,” said F. Patrick Escobar, the AAF’s vice president for grants and programs. “We’ve been involved with all sports from A to Z. Well, not quite Z. From archery to yachting. Not just basketball or football, but sports like lacrosse. And we had a small program for cricket. A lot of different sports come to us, and some traditional ones, as well.”

Thanks to prudent investments, the AAF’s original $95 million endowment has grown to about $170 million. Its board of directors, which consists mostly of business executives but also includes Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, has decided to do its work in perpetuity, so its investments and expenses have been planned accordingly and the endowment securely protected.

“A lot of people don’t realize we’re unique in the world,” Escobar said. “Throughout Southern California, on any given day, there are literally thousands of kids touched by this legacy. Whether they’re wearing uniforms we helped provide or using equipment that was somehow purchased with money we provided, we try to not only help kids play, but to enhance their experience.

“Even $5,000 to a Little League team is a lot of money, and it gives them a respite from fund-raising or allows them to buy a pitching machine or get new helmets.”

This year’s grants were typical of the AAF’s expenditures. The Watts/Willowbrook Boys & Girls Club got $250,000 to help fund construction of a gymnasium, and the Exposition Park Intergenerational Community Center got the same amount for a project that includes refurbishing the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Swim Stadium. The AAF has given $3 million to that project.

The Encino Velodrome got $173,900 to upgrade its facility and offer youth cycling programs, and the Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation got $175,812 for a gymnasium and other improvements to the Rakestraw Community Center. Other sizable grants went to the Southern California Speedskating Assn., the Southern California Youth Soccer Organization, the American Youth Soccer Organization, and the Salvation Army’s South Central Youth Project. Smaller grants went to junior football leagues, a track club and other youth groups.

“There are many cities that don’t quite understand it’s nice to put on the Olympic Games, but at the end of the day, it’s the legacy that matters,” Escobar said. “We will be able to help generations in years to come.”

Every host city should be required to do the same.

Running on Empty?

Many people connected with the local track and field scene were surprised when Craig Masback, chief executive officer of USA Track and Field, told The Times last week he has been negotiating to stage a major meet in Los Angeles. They all wondered who could pull it off--and how. And where.

Michael Roth, a spokesman for Staples Center, said he’s not aware of an indoor meet having been even penciled in on the arena’s schedule. Don Franken, who with his father, Al, promotes the L.A. Invitational meet at the Sports Arena, said he had heard nothing. People associated with the doomed Powerade Indoor Championships, which were to be held at Staples Center in January but were canceled because of a dispute over sponsor funding, say they’ve also heard nothing.

“We haven’t been notified, and that probably means it doesn’t include us,” said Don Franken, who sent a note to Masback offering to help organize and promote a proposed meet, and got a politely noncommittal reply.

“If you’re going to do an indoor meet,” Franken said, “it would have to be at Staples. And when we talked to Staples, they told us they felt what happened [with the Powerade meet] was such a black eye, they don’t want to look at track and field again for a few years.”

Staging a meet at Staples Center would require sufficient money and guarantees to avoid a repeat of the Powerade fiasco. Franken said he will pay $25,000 to rent the Sports Arena for the 42nd edition of the L.A. Invitational Feb. 23, but it would have cost $175,000 to rent Staples. And that’s before other expenses. “Our feeling is until we have really solid sponsors, it makes no sense to do that and put ourselves out of business,” Franken said.

Franken also said he and his father have hired an agency to seek sponsors. The L.A. Invitational lost its major sponsor, Sunkist, in 1995 after 26 years.

Turning Cartwheels

After USA Gymnastics relocated the 2003 world championships to Anaheim from Indianapolis, officials of the Los Angeles Sports Council and the Arrowhead Pond weren’t sure if their bid to host the 2004 U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials still had a chance. They feared it would be too much to expect to land two major competitions--but not only is the 2004 bid alive, it was reaffirmed last week as a finalist, with bids from Boston and New Orleans.

“We think we can still make a very strong case for having both,” said David Simon, president of the L.A. Sports Council. “If we get both, that enhances the marketing opportunities for those events.”

The Sports Council will learn next month whether it will win its bid to host the 2005 world swimming championships in Long Beach. Simon will attend this year’s meet in Fukoka, Japan, to get the word in person.

With the U.S. Figure Skating championships at Staples Center and the Sports Arena in January, at least one major gymnastics meet secured, a bid under consideration to host the 2012 Summer Olympics and the possibility of hosting the swim championships, the L.A. Sports Council’s plate is full.

“I don’t think I’ll add a whole lot of bids to our repertoire,” Simon said. “Then again, a month ago, I didn’t think we were going to have the world gymnastics championships and that kind of fell in our lap. Who knows what else might fall in our laps?”

Here and There

Irina Slutskaya, runner-up at this year’s world figure skating championships, will compete in the Goodwill Games, the first of many meetings between Slutskaya and four-time world champion Michelle Kwan leading to the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Two-time U.S. champion Michael Weiss, whose foot injury contributed to his fourth-place finish at this year’s national meet, will also compete in the Goodwill Games, to be held Aug. 29-Sept. 9 in Brisbane, Australia.

The 2005 luge world championships were awarded to Park City, Utah, the first time the competition will be in the U.S. since 1983. . . . The U.S. Fencing Assn. is holding its Summer Nationals this week at the Sacramento Convention Center. It’s a qualifying event for the U.S. team that will compete at the world meet in Nimes, France, in October. Four Sydney Olympians are scheduled to compete: Akhnaten Spencer El in men’s sabre, Iris Zimmermann in women’s foil, Ann Marsh in women’s foil and Arlene Stevens in women’s epee. The U.S. women’s sabre team won the world title last year, as did the junior women’s sabre team and the junior men’s sabre team. Members of those teams are expected to compete in Sacramento this week.

Marathon runner Keith Brantly, a member of the U.S. team at the 1996 Atlanta Games and winner of the 1998 U.S. national marathon championship, agreed to run four marathons between July 8 and Dec. 15 to benefit various charities. Brantly will start last in each marathon and for each registered runner he passes, General Nutrition Companies will donate $1 to the National Attention Deficit Disorder Assn. and the official charity of each marathon. Brantly was diagnosed with ADD as a child.

Only 222 days until the Salt Lake City Winter Games.