With the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games nearly here, it’s never too early for Southern Californians to start planning for 2028.
We’re slightly more than four years to the date away from Los Angeles hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics, but on Friday LA28 announced that it will rely on currently constructed venues to host some of the biggest events. Without working on any major construction efforts, the committee announced some potentially shocking venues for some of the top sports.
Swimming events often become the star of the show in the Summer Games, and Americans take the podium often enough to generate a large national interest. With that in mind, swimming needed a world-class venue for it’s events, and what better venue for that than SoFi Stadium.
The Inglewood home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers of the NFL will host the swimming events. According to LA28, the stadium’s seating situation will be modified to hold 38,000 spectators for the event, down from the usual 70,000 for football and up to 100,000 for concerts.
Even with the modifications, it will be the largest swimming venue in Olympic history.
Another major surprise involved a second host city for the L.A. Games. Citing a lack of adequate venues in Southern California, the softball and canoe slalom events will take place more than 1,000 miles away in Oklahoma City.
Those two events will use pre-existing facilities in Oklahoma. The largest softball venue in L.A. can hold just 2,000 people, and there isn’t an Olympic-level canoe slalom venue in the western U.S., according to LA28.
Plans for the opening and closing ceremonies remain unchanged, with parts of both taking place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium.
“It’s been in Ohio as early as the mid-1850s at least, brought in as an ornamental plant because of its unique foliage and white flowers,” Gardner said. “It was actually planted in people’s landscaping, and it has been spreading.”
The Coliseum will also host track and field events. Crypto.Com Arena will host gymnastics, and the brand-new Intuit Dome in Inglewood, the home of the L.A. Clippers, will host the basketball tournaments.
More host locations were announced, including:
- Olympic Artistic Swimming to Long Beach
- Olympic and Paralympic Equestrian to Temecula
- Olympic Diving to Exposition Park
- Olympic Archery to Sepulveda Basin
- Olympic BMX Racing and Freestyle to Sepulveda Basin
- Olympic Skateboarding to Sepulveda Basin
More locations will be announced in the future, according to LA28.