Tentatively chosen – 1983 Los Angeles Olympics Commemorative Silver Dollar Coin

Today, the 1983 Los Angeles Olympics Commemorative Silver Dollar Coin remembers the activities of 37 years ago.

The Oxnard, California Press Courier printed the following article announcing the news about the 1984 XXXIIIrd Olympiad from Athens, Greece.

=====

LA Tentatively Picked As ’84 Olympics Site

Athens, Greece (AP)β€”The International Olympic Committee Thursday provisionally awarded the 1984 Olympic Games to Los Angeles.

The IOC made its ruling conditional, saying that Los Angeles must agree to a contract within the framework of the IOC rules by July 31.

If such a contract is not agreed to, the provisional award of the Games will be withdrawn.

Lord Killanin, president of the IOC, made the announcement at an Athens Hotel and said that 75 members of the IOC had voted unanimously.

He also read a statement drawn up by the 26 international federations which control the Olympics urging the IOC to assure that the Games charter is fully observed before it grants the Olympics to Los Angeles or to any other city.

Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, won the 1984 Winter Games by a mere three votes from Sapporo, the Japanese city which hosted the Winter Games in 1972. The vote was 39 for Sarajevo and 36 for Sapporo.

Sapporo led on the first ballot with 33 votes against Sarajevo’s 31. The third candidate city, Goteborg, Sweden, received only ten votes and was eliminated. A second ballot followed between the two leaders with Sarajevo winning.

Killanin did not say what the IOC’s next step would be if Los Angeles failed to meet the required conditions by July 31. But Montreal, Munich, Mexico City and New York City are all reported interested in taking over the Games.

Included in Los Angeles’ bid for the Games is a plan to insure the city against financial loss.

“I have no doubt we can find a company that will do it,” Mayor Tom Bradley said after his delegation had discussed the revolutionary insurance plan with the IOC.

=====

Another newspaper, the Lodi Sentinel, provided further explanation:

=====

“In the event of such a contract not being signed by July 31, the provisional award of the Games of the 23rd Olympiad (1984) will be withdrawn and new application called for,” Killanin said.

The provisional award was welcomed with relief by the Los Angeles delegation, which had been involved with some down-to-the-wire legal wrangling with the IOC in an effort to avoid accepting financial liability for the Olympics.

Even the provisional acceptance of Los Angeles had been put in doubt Wednesday when the delegation, in its lone bid to the IOC, refused to sign the IOC contract.

“I’m relieved,” said Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

At the moment the fate of the Los Angeles Olympics lies with the City Council. In the next few days it will study a plan put forward by U.S. Olympic Committee President Bob Kane to obtain insurance against the Games taking a financial loss.

The plan involves the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, which has yet to be formed by the Council, to indemnify itself against going into the red. Any loss would then be paid by an insurance company and not by local taxpayers, according to the plan.

=====

Though the Los Angeles Committee wanted the Summer Games, they did not want a financial debt similar to the huge loss experienced by the 1976 Games in Montreal.

Instead of many new construction project, the Los Angeles Games used many existing venues, one of which was the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that had previously hosted the 1932 Summer Olympics.

The 1984 Games only built two new venues, the Olympic Velodrome and the Olympic Swim Stadium using funds primarily from 7-Eleven and McDonald’s corporations.

With the low construction costs and their heavy reliance on private corporate funding, the 1984 Summer Games became the most profitable in the Games’ history.

The 1983 Los Angeles Olympics Commemorative Silver Dollar Coin shows against a view of the torch at the Memorial Coliseum.

1983 Los Angeles Olympics Commemorative Silver Dollar Coin