Olympic Rewind: LA Memorial Coliseum's Olympic history as it prepares for LA28
The stadium will host Olympic events for the third time in 2028, and the Paralympics for the first time.
The opening and closing ceremony venues for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics and Paralympics were unveiled recently, with Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium taking centre stage in three years’ time.
Both stadiums will both host the Olympic opening ceremony on July 14, 2028 as the organizing committee plans the first-ever split ceremony across multiple venues in Olympic history. On July 30 the Coliseum will host the Olympic closing ceremony. SoFi, which will be known as “Stadium in Inglewood” for Olympic regulations around sponsored stadiums, will then host the Paralympic opening ceremony on August 15, 2028 before the closing ceremony is at the Coliseum 12 days later.
SoFi stadium was opened in 2020, and will be making its Olympic and Paralympic debut in 2028, while the Coliseum was opened in 1923 and hosted events at the 1932 and 1984 Olympics. LA28 will be the first Paralympics to be held in the city.
The Coliseum has been home to many major events over the past century, sporting and otherwise, but let’s dive into its Olympic history so far, and how it relates to Team Canada.
1932 Summer Olympics
The 1932 Summer Olympics were a revolutionary Games, for reasons that are still prevalent 90+ years later. The 1932 Games were the first Olympics to build an Olympic Village, but more notably it was the first time medallists were celebrated using a podium at the Summer Olympics after the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid started the tradition that is still used to this day.
The Coliseum, less than ten years old at the time, hosted several sports — athletics, gymnastics, field hockey and the show jumping portion of the equestrian event. It also hosted both the opening and closing ceremonies.
While Canada didn’t win medals in any of the other events at the coliseum, they won nine in athletics. Track and field events have produced more Canadian medals than any other Olympic sport, and to this day the nine athletics medals won in 1932 is the most by Canadians at a single Olympics.
Duncan McNaughton became the first Canadian to win a gold medal in men’s high jump, and would be the only one until Derek Drouin accomplished the feat at Rio 2016. Eva Dawes took bronze in the women’s high jump in 1932, one of five Canadian athletics third-place finishes. Phil Edwards finished third in the men’s 800 and 1500m events, while Alex Wilson took bronze in the men’s 400m. Edwards and Wilson teamed up with Raymond Lewis and James Ball to finish third in the 4x400m relay.
Wilson also won a silver medal in the men's 800m ahead of Edwards, and Hilda Strike was second in the women's 100m — marginally, after both her and Poland’s Stanisława Walasiewicz ran a world record time of 11.9 seconds. Strike, along with Mildred Fizzell, Lillian Palmer and Mary Frizzel, won a silver medal in the women’s 4x100m relay as well.
1984 Summer Olympics
Fifty-two years after first hosting the Olympics, Los Angeles hosted again in 1984, under strained political conditions. Nineteen countries boycotted the Olympics for political reasons, 15 of them under a Soviet-led response to 67 nations boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, led by the United States and including Canada.
With several nations missing that were sporting powerhouses, including the Soviet Union and East Germany among others, Canada had their most successful Summer Olympics ever in 1984, winning 44 medals.
The LA Coliseum played a role in Canada’s success, hosting the athletics competitions again along with the opening and closing ceremonies. Canada won five athletics medals, all in track events.
Angela Bailey, France Gareau, Marita Payne and Angella Taylor won silver in the women’s 4x100m event, on the same day Payne, Charmaine Crooks, Molly Killingbeck, Jill Richardson and Dana Wright won a silver in the 4x400m relay. Also on that day, August 11, Sterling Hinds, Ben Johnson, Tony Sharpe and Desai Williams took bronze in the men’s 4x100.
For Johnson, who would be at the centre of a doping scandal four years later, it was his second bronze medal of the Olympics after finishing third in the men’s 100m earlier in the week. Lynn Williams won the other bronze medal for Canada, in the women’s 3000m.
2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics
Three years from now, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl will become the first two stadiums in the world to host three Olympics.
As mentioned, the Coliseum will split opening ceremony duties with SoFi Stadium before it hosts the closing ceremony on its own. It will also host athletics competitions for the third time, with those events being moved up to the first week of the Olympics and swimming pushed back to week two instead to accommodate SoFi’s use for both swimming and the Olympic opening ceremony.
It will also host para athletics as the city welcomes the Paralympic Games for the first time, as well as the Paralympic closing ceremony.
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