No Question, the Games Belong in New York City

Give New York the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee should choose New York to organize the Summer Games in 11 years. And the USOC and IOC shouldn’t wait until 2005, as scheduled, to award the 2012 Games. Give them to New York now.

And not only because of Sept. 11, 2001.

Not only because the world feels sorry for New York. Not only because New York could somehow be made whole again by hosting the Olympics. You don’t make up for thousands dead with a sporting event. You don’t make up for a collective shattered psyche by celebrating the handing over of the Olympic torch for three weeks. A Yankee World Series victory can’t, for a second, make parentless children feel whole again and an Olympics 11 years from now won’t make New York the same city it was.

The 2012 Olympics should go to New York because the Olympics have never been to New York.

And the Olympics should go to the world’s greatest city. The Olympics are long overdue there. Give New York the early go-ahead for these Games because of Sept. 11. But give them the Games because it’s right.

For those who might scream that the United States has had the Olympics too often, that the Olympics should go to other parts of the world, New York is the perfect place. New York represents the world better than any other city.

Killed in the buildings destroyed by two airplanes on Sept. 11 were citizens from more than 60 countries. Many went to New York for a new beginning, a better chance for a better life, an opportunity for their children to receive an education or medical treatment or to have hope for the future.

Some might scream that the Olympics will be swallowed up by New York’s vastness and energy, with its blustery self-importance, with its brashness and divided attention. Some might say that New York will have its Yankees and Mets, its Giants and Jets starting preseason practice and won’t give its full attention to the Olympics, unlike Sydney or Barcelona, whose citizens took great pride in making the Olympics their lives for three weeks, or like Beijing, where the government will make sure citizens make the Olympics their lives for three weeks.

But that is not showing enough confidence in the Olympics.

The Olympics are bigger than New York, and New York is big enough to make the Olympics feel important while still cheering for the Yankees and Mets.

Houston, San Francisco and Washington also made the cut Friday, when the USOC whittled a list of eight U.S. bid cities.

We shouldn’t be insulted that Los Angeles didn’t make the cut. It is a little silly. That the USOC saw fit to knock out Los Angeles is just another foolish stumble by an organization that just this week appointed a new chief executive after an acrimonious search, then scheduled a news conference to introduce the man, Lloyd Ward, former CEO of Maytag, and neglected to tell him about the news conference.

But Los Angeles doesn’t need another Olympics. Los Angeles will always have the knowledge that by hosting the 1984 Games, by stepping up with financing and seamless performance, it saved the Games.

In the Olympic movement, Los Angeles will always be No. 1. In this, Los Angeles is ahead of New York and can be proud of the way it has hosted two successful games and be safe in the knowledge it will always be able to handle a third or a fourth.

When IOC members became worried that 2004 host Athens would not be able to finish construction (or even start construction) on key facilities, L.A. was considered a logical possible replacement. There was the assumption that L.A. would have the gumption to step in at the last minute and do things right.

Whether the USOC folks knocked out Los Angeles because they didn’t like the bid components or found some personalities too arrogant, as has been reported, doesn’t really matter. What Los Angeles knows is that it would have held another excellent Olympics. And it will again.

Let’s hope Houston made the cut only because it is the one place among the final four that has already guaranteed all the money the IOC requires. Houston is a financial club over the heads of the other three. There is no way the United States would put forward a city with air almost too humid to breath in August, not after a summer during which so many football players died while practicing in summer heat.

Washington isn’t a real city. It is a place of government and monuments. It is a symbol of our nation. New York is a symbol of our people. San Francisco will be a fine choice some day. Northern California will make a good host.

Just not in 2012.

Now is New York’s time.

Athens 2004 could be a mess. It seems IOC bigwigs are traveling to Athens every other month or so to threaten, cajole, beg the Greeks to start building--venues, hotels, roads, subways--all the things the country promised to provide and many of the things that will never get done.

Beijing 2008 could be a disaster, unless you like your Olympics played in a country filled with political prisoners and accustomed to running over its protesting citizens with tanks and with athletes competing in polluted air.

New York in 2012 could be the savior of the Games, just as Los Angeles had been. Los Angeles’ Peter Ueberroth showed the world how to pay for the Olympics.

Rudy Giuliani could be New York’s Ueberroth. Giuliani’s spirit combined with New York’s vibrancy would make for an Olympics buoyant, boastful, loud, large and, most of all, wonderful.

There hasn’t been a more perfect choice since 1984.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.