When Los Angeles last hosted the Special Olympics in 1972, about 3,000 athletes from the U.S. and Canada participated in the four-day event on the campuses of UCLA and Santa Monica College.
Forty-three years later, the Special Olympics World Games are back with much bigger numbers to a city hoping to show it can still host a worldwide sporting event. The nine days of competition will mark the biggest athletic gathering since Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Summer Olympics.
For a city that this year narrowly lost the race to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and where tourism is a top employer, positive exposure is always a welcome commodity.