L.A. Is Not on USOC List

Los Angeles, site of the two most successful U.S. Summer Games of the 20th century, was eliminated Friday as a candidate for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The U.S. Olympic Committee selected New York, Washington, San Francisco and Houston to remain in the race. Next fall, the USOC will pick one of those four to be the sole U.S. candidate. In 2005, the International Olympic Committee will pick the 2012 site.

Eliminated in the first round along with Los Angeles were Cincinnati, Dallas and Tampa, Fla. The USOC portrayed the vote of its policymaking executive committee as unanimous.

“I respectfully disagree,” said Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles, the senior IOC member in the United States, of the decision to eliminate L.A.

In vying again for the Olympics after the successes of the 1932 and 1984 Games, the Los Angeles 2012 bid featured the best facilities in the country, with only one of 33 venues--a shooting range--needing to be built. It also called for a profit conservatively estimated at $96 million. But the USOC’s rejection of Los Angeles was considered a stinging rebuke, proving how insignificantly receding glories of the past bear on the future.

USOC officials said it was an easy call to eliminate Los Angeles, and the others, from the list. “There was a clear case for taking [the] four cities forward,” said Charles Moore, who headed the USOC task force that visited all eight, saying the four moving forward ranked better in a variety of categories ranging from general and sports infrastructure to “partnership ability.”

The abrupt end to L.A.’s 2012 possibilities means Southern California is now out of the Olympic scene for the foreseeable future. The Summer Games of 2016 won’t be awarded until 2009; if a U.S. city wins the 2012 Games, Los Angeles won’t be a contender for perhaps a generation beyond.

“I’m deeply disappointed,” said DeFrantz, who spoke out in support of Los Angeles during the meeting. “I believe Los Angeles clearly has the organizational capacity and has long been a terrific partner for the USOC.”

The 1932 Games turned a profit in the depths of the Depression and, as is widely acknowledged, the 1984 Games financially rescued the IOC and USOC; the USOC took home 60% of the $232-million profit from the 1984 Games, about $140 million.

Olympic contacts in Southern California still run deep. Three of the four U.S. members of the IOC live in Southern California; scores of Olympic athletes live and train in the area.

None of that mattered enough on Friday, and L.A. bid team officials, reeling from a rejection they had not fully anticipated, also voiced disappointment. “Sorry. We did our best. It wasn’t good enough,” said Rich Perelman, L.A. 2012’s technical director.

USOC officials said that New York, Washington, San Francisco and Houston simply put forward better bids from a technical standpoint, measuring such things as transit infrastructure and the plan for an Olympic Village. The L.A. plan called for the village, for instance, to be at residence halls at UCLA and USC, just as it was in 1984; the USOC preferred something new.

“Their bid was not well prepared. It wasn’t a polished bid,” one insider said of the L.A. 2012 plan, adding, “Just like in Moscow, Istanbul wasn’t polished,” a biting reference to the IOC’s recently concluded process for selecting the site of the 2008 Games. In Moscow this past July, the IOC selected Beijing to host the 2008 Games over four other cities; Istanbul finished far behind.

The fact that Los Angeles had played host to the Games twice before clearly proved to be a negative--even though USOC officials insisted the two prior Games were a plus, especially in the area of venue management and Games experience from 1984. “They may have said it was a plus, but the reality is the category of ‘experience’ obviously didn’t count for very much,” said David Simon, president of the L.A. 2012 bid.

Also working against L.A. was a lack of government support.

Jim Easton, a U.S. IOC member whose sports equipment company is headquartered in Van Nuys, said, “There was something about Los Angeles--and maybe it was based greatly on the lack of government support--that was difficult to overcome.”

In part, this was a matter of appearances. Mayor Jim Hahn, who easily offers up his own 1984 Olympic memories, nonetheless was on vacation when the USOC’s task force visited Los Angeles in late August; it was the mayor’s first vacation since being elected.

In contrast, Houston officials spent the moments immediately after Friday’s announcement fielding congratulatory phone calls from the likes of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas). Former President George Bush also issued a statement that said, “Without question, Houston would do an outstanding job on the Olympics.”

In part, the issue of government support also reflected more substantive concerns. Unlike New York and Houston, for instance, Los Angeles had not yet offered a government guarantee for financial liability if the Games were to run at a deficit.

No such guarantee was envisioned, the L.A. plan calling for the Games to be privately financed, as in 1984; as a substitute, the L.A. bid team had planned to purchase insurance against liabilities. The USOC is known to strongly prefer government support.

“We were going to be protecting taxpayers,” Simon said.

The San Francisco plan similarly calls for the purchase of insurance.

Bob Stiles, the San Francisco bid director, asserted: “We feel an obligation for the Olympics to create opportunities and give back to the community, not take away from the community--and we think we have the financial plan to do it.”

As a final point, USOC officials also made plain their reasoning that New York, Washington, San Francisco, even Houston stood a better chance than Los Angeles at winning the hearts and minds of the European-dominated IOC.

A slew of cities from around the world already have expressed interest in seeking the 2012 Games. Among them: London, Rome, Berlin, Madrid, Budapest, Paris, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Havana and Tel Aviv. Toronto was runner-up to Beijing in the 2008 vote. U.S. chances of winning might be further complicated if a North American city is selected as host of the 2010 Winter Games. Vancouver, Canada, is among the favorites.

“We have to pick a winner, an international winner, and you wouldn’t expect anything less,” Moore said.

Officials from the four winners sought to balance private jubilation with measured gratitude to the USOC for advancing and a cautious optimism about prevailing in the coming rounds. New York’s bid, which among IOC members has generated the most buzz of the U.S. candidates, emerges from Friday’s vote as the perceived U.S. front-runner.

It’s not clear how the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon will figure in the process; Moore and others said the attacks were “not material.” The mayor of Rome had last month suggested that all other cities ought to defer to New York as a gesture of solidarity; the president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, called the suggestion premature.

But Easton, stressing that he was not expressing a prediction or a personal opinion about which of the four remaining cities ought to be the U.S. candidate, observed: “Feelings for New York would probably be a factor in helping [it] win in the international arena.”

Dan Doctoroff, head of the New York bid, said New York aims to win votes on the merits, not sympathy. He said of Friday’s vote, “It’s an important milestone for us, and we’re thrilled.”

John Morton III, chairman of the Washington campaign, said, “We’re really optimistic about our chances of winning the international competition,” calling D.C. a “great city, the heart of the nation and one that, to many people, symbolizes hope and freedom.”

Houston would seem to be the longshot of the group; last week, USA Today reckoned the odds of Houston winning the bid at 1,000-1. But George DeMontrond III, chairman of the Houston bid, said he likes Houston’s chances--so much so that the Houston group sent a letter to the newspaper offering to bet $2,012 at those 1,000-1 odds.

Even as DeMontrond spoke, Perelman was wheeling his suitcase through the hotel lobby. He paused on his way out of town just long enough to quip, “We came. We lost. We left.”

“But,” he added a moment later, “we’ll be back.”