LA28 Venue Updates Announcements to Come This Year

Venue changes to the plans for the 2028 Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles will be rolled out throughout this year, it was said during the general assembly of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations in Birmingham, England.

During the recent event, LA28 Senior Director of Sports Nicco Campriani led a report from the 2028 organizing committee and said, “I think we have engaged with each one of you and we have asked each one of you not to share your location, in particular if your location has changed since the time of the bid with anybody, because we are getting ready for a number of announcements throughout 2024. … We also have a number of venue changes; they’re exciting ones and we do stress the confidentiality, so we can all make a big splash when it comes to that announcement, all together.”

LA28 Chair Casey Wasserman recently hinted at changes to the venue plan from its original proposal to the International Olympic Committee in 2017. During a chat on The Bill Simmons Podcast, Wasserman said basketball, originally proposed to be at Crypto.com Arena and L.A. Convention Center, will instead be at the new Intuit Dome in Inglewood. There will also be a temporary track-and-field facility at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, returning athletics to the site it was held at in 1984.

Wasserman also hinted that Dodger Stadium would host baseball, which was generally assumed, but did not mention a softball site. He also said the Olympic Village at UCLA will take up so much campus space that no competitions would be held at Pauley Pavilion, where judo and wrestling were scheduled to be organized. A final decision has also not yet been made on surfing, although Huntington Beach is a top candidate.

Oklahoma City an Option?

Those changes are within Southern California but some events may be moved much further out of the region. The International Canoe Federation said during its 2022 Congress in Thailand that the canoe slalom competition for the 2028 Games could be moved and hinted in the summer of 2023 that it would be relocated to Riversport OKC in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Riversport OKC is scheduled to host the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials for kayak cross and canoe slalom from April 26–28. It hosted the 2021 International Canoe Federation Super Cup and when the ICF needed a last-minute replacement host for the 2022 Canoe Sprint Super Cup and the 2022 ICF Stand Up Paddling World Cup to relocate the event out of Russia, the Oklahoma venue hosted on short notice.

LA28 had originally proposed the canoe sprint events be held at the Long Beach Marine Stadium after first proposing Lake Perris in Riverside County. The last Summer Games held in the U.S. was Atlanta in 1996, at which the canoe slalom events were at the Ocoee Whitewater Center in Ducktown in Tennessee.

Also at the meeting, Ingmar De Vos was named the next president of ASOIF as the third term of President Francesco Ricci Bitti ends on December 31, 2024. De Vos ran unopposed for a four-year term starting New Year’s Day on 2025.

“I am humbled by today’s result and would like to express my deep gratitude to the Summer Olympic International Federations for their trust,” said De Vos. “I am fully aware of the fact that I have big shoes to fill and during my mandate I will make it my mission to continue strengthening the role of the Summer International Sports Federations in the Olympic Movement and focus on an open and constructive dialogue with the IOC.”

The general assembly also approved four new members based on the sports program for LA28 with the International Federation of American Football, International Cricket Council, World Lacrosse and World Squash. ASOIF also voted to exclude the International Boxing Association, which was de-recognized by the IOC at the 2023 IOC Session in India.