CNN
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The Paris Games are over, the Olympic flame that hung in a cauldron above the Jardins de Tuileries has been extinguished, and the Olympic flag has been handed over to Los Angeles for the 2028 Games.

Organizers have already given a small taste of the spirit of a Hollywood Games by sprinkling the handover with some Hollywood star dust, as Tom Cruise jumped from the roof of the Stade de France at the closing ceremony to carry the Olympic flag out of the stadium on the back of a motorbike, while Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and the Red Hot Chili Peppers also performed.

In just 1,432 days, the Olympic Games in Los Angeles will begin with the opening ceremony on July 14, 2028, and will last until July 30. The Paralympic Games will begin on August 15 and end on August 27.

So what can we expect from the Los Angeles Olympics in four years?

Olympic venues will be spread across the city and include some of its most famous landmarks, and the action will extend to Oklahoma City, on the other side of the country. to.

Los Angeles has already hosted two Olympic Games, in 1932 and 1984. The infrastructure is so good that no new permanent venues need to be built for 2028. The athletes will be housed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and not in a specially built Olympic Village.

Although it is not yet clear exactly where each sport will take place in Los Angeles, organizers have already announced some of their major venues.

The arches of the LA Memorial Coliseum will overlook the Olympics, making it the first stadium ever to host three Olympic opening ceremonies and track and field events. The downtown Los Angeles arena, normally home to the LA Lakers and LA Sparks basketball teams, will be transformed into an arena for gymnastics, while the beautiful 1932 swimming pool in Exposition Park, built for this year’s Olympics, will serve as the venue for diving.

Organizers plan to hold the swimming events in a temporary pool at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, which is normally used for NFL games. With such a large capacity, the stadium will be able to accommodate 38,000 spectators despite having a 50-meter pool, making it the largest Olympic swimming facility ever.

Several miles of Los Angeles coastline are also used as venues for the Olympic Games: the Long Beach waterfront will host the swimming and triathlon marathon, while the sailing events will be held on Belmont Shore in Long Beach.

Oklahoma City will play a supporting role to Los Angeles with its Whitewater Center and Softball Park, which will host canoe slalom and softball events.

On Sunday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reiterated her goal of hosting the Olympics “car-free,” which raised some eyebrows given that Los Angeles is widely known as the transportation capital of the world.

“We are a very car-dependent city, but that also means that if you want to attend one of the sporting events, you have to use public transportation,” Bass told CNN’s Amara Walker.

“We have expanded our system, but we will also need a lot of buses, thousands of buses from neighboring cities and states to achieve this.”

Bass told reporters that the city will use 3,000 buses borrowed from across the United States, encourage telecommuting to reduce traffic during the games and invest in the public transportation system to achieve that goal.

Sports such as surfing, climbing and skateboarding have proven popular additions to the Olympics in recent years, bringing new energy to the Games.

Five more new sports will be added to the Olympic program in LA: flag football, baseball/softball, cricket, lacrosse and squash.

The five were chosen because they “resonate with American sporting culture and will showcase iconic American sports to the world while bringing international sport to the United States,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement released in October 2023. “Their inclusion will enable the Olympic movement to reach new communities of athletes and fans in the United States and around the world,” he added.

This is the first Olympic appearance for flag football – a variant of American football in which players take flags from their opponents’ belts rather than tackling them – and squash, which has been lobbying for years for its inclusion in the Games.

Cricket was played at the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, while lacrosse was on the program in St. Louis in 1904 and London in 1908. Both games have since disappeared from the Olympic program. Baseball and softball have been at and off the Olympics, most recently at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

New disciplines and sports have also been included in the Olympic program. In coastal rowing, athletes sprint across the sand before navigating through the waves in special boats and trying to be the first to cross the finish line.

Breaking was a hotly anticipated new sport in Paris and went viral when Australian B-girl Raygun put on a performance that became a meme, but the sport has already been dropped from the Olympic program.

The decision was made before breakdancing made its debut in Paris, and it will not return to the Olympics, at least for now.

Meanwhile, boxing has not yet been officially included in the Olympic program due to the IOC’s decision in June 2023 to withdraw recognition from the International Boxing Association (IBA), the sport’s now discredited governing body, after a years-long dispute. Any decision on the future of boxing at the Olympic Games is “on hold,” the IOC announced in October 2023.

And the modern pentathlon – a rather unusual discipline in which athletes traditionally compete in fencing, show jumping, 200-meter freestyle swimming and a laser run, a combination of running and shooting – will have a new look in LA.

Show jumping will be replaced by steeplechase racing, a decision that secured the sport’s participation in the Olympic Games, the IOC said in a statement. There had previously been a major outcry during the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo when the German modern pentathlon coach, Kim Raisner, was disqualified for hitting a horse.

According to the IOC, the final event programme will be completed sometime between now and the first quarter of 2025.