Sports
Plaschke: Bring it on! Los Angeles begins countdown to 2028 Olympics
Finally, dramatically, it has ended, the 2024 Paris Olympics finishing its last lap Sunday with incomparable enthusiasm, unbridled joy, and one last look at the gloriously intimidating tour Eiffel.
All of which means one thing.
2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games
We’ve got next.
Gulp.
How on earth can the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics surpass what the world just witnessed in a two-week burst of picturesque rejoicing from the Champ de Mars to the Palace of Versailles?
How can we match the overwhelming emotion from screaming fans and weeping athletes in a blockbuster Parisian party that was two weeks of pure Hollywood?
How can we clone Simon Biles?
The Paris Olympics are going to be the toughest act for this town to follow since the five-time champion Minneapolis Lakers moved here 64 years ago. We have to somehow take greatness and make it even greater, and we have to accomplish this without ample time or Jerry West.
The sun sets over the Eiffel Tower as the U.S. plays Canada in Olympic women’s beach volleyball on July 27.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
At first glance, this task would seem as difficult as finding a new drone vendor for the Canadian women’s soccer team or appropriate undergarments for French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati.
This is going to be one tough canoe slalom.
An area that can’t logistically handle one sport in one venue — hello, Dodger Stadium — must suddenly manage more than 40 sports in venues that should stretch from the Valley to Temecula.
A freeway system that can’t hack a Thursday night Rams game at SoFi must survive a two-week influx of millions of visitors who will be in gridlock before they leave LAX.
Public transportation? What’s that? The new Chargers coach, Jim Harbaugh, recently remarked that he was struck by the emptiness on the Metro train that runs above his El Segundo practice facility. You really think people around here are going to start using public transportation?
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and U.S. gymnast Simone Biles stand together before receiving the Olympic flag during the Paris Olympics closing ceremony at the Stade de France on Sunday.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass waves the Olympic flag during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics on Sunday.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
This week Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reiterated her message of an earlier Times interview when she brazenly called for “A no-car Games.”
Seriously? If true, that would pretty much be the same as a “no-Los Angeles Games.” Good thing the LA28 organizing committee later clarified that while public transit would be preferred, nobody will be told they cannot drive to a competition.
Traffic will be only one of our issues. If the last two weeks are any indication, four years from now the weather will be scorching, crime will be rising, and the entire Olympic footprint could smell like burnt toast.
This is going to be one tough speed climb.
That said …
This is the city of champions, a city whose sporting soul is rooted in resilience, a city whose fans urge greatness and whose stars supply magic.
This is a city that doesn’t flinch. Kobe Bryant never flinched.
Four years after his death, Kobe Bryant still lives.
(Supe Koolphanich / For The Times)
This is a city that doesn’t scare. Kirk Gibson never feared.
This is a city where even the most insurmountable of sporting challenges are met, embraced and summarily destroyed.
The Los Angeles Rams didn’t exist in 2015, yet won a Super Bowl six years later.
The Kings were plunked down in a place that hated the cold, yet they made ice cool and won two Stanley Cup championships.
The greatest basketball player in history works here. The greatest baseball player in history works here. The greatest hockey player in history once worked here. The great coaches in both pro and college basketball once worked here.
This town invented the high five, for Dusty’s sake.
Los Angeles knows sporting excellence, and we darn sure know how to throw a bash to celebrate it. This city has already held an Olympics twice, with 1984 being arguably the most successful Games ever. Ask any of your neighbors who witnessed it or worked it, they’ll never forget it.
So, yeah, bring it on, forget four years, we can be ready for these Olympics in four days, we’re built for it, we’re meant for it, we’re perfect for it.
The torch is lit at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a venue set to host 2028 Olympic events.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
We can do this. We will do this.
There will be traffic but, like in 1984, here’s guessing enough people will leave town or work remotely to make it manageable.
There will be heat but, unlike in Paris, we actually have that strange new contraption called air conditioning.
It will be complicated, messy and endlessly frustrating. But if you stick around to buy tickets or volunteer, trust history, it will be wonderful.
Just listen to Steve Miller, a longtime Los Angeles basketball coach who has taught the game at various levels for 51 years yet will never forget those two weeks in 1984.
He was the volunteer who would choose the MVPs for the losing basketball teams at the Forum and accompany them to the news conferences. He had a backstage look at effort and anguish and the sort of passion he has rarely seen since.
Mary Lou Retton celebrates winning the gymnastics all-around gold medal during the 1984 Olympics.
(Tony Barnard)
“It was a great, great experience for me,” Miller remembered Sunday. “Every single game felt like a game between Garfield and Roosevelt. Everybody diving on the floor, doing whatever it took. Every country, every player, it meant something special to all of them.”
Miller still has photos of his volunteer group hanging on a wall in his home. And he’s hoping to add to his collection.
He’ll be 83 in 2028, but he’s ready for an encore.
“If they’ll have me, I’m there,” he said. “There’s nothing like it.”
Agreed. I’ve covered 10 Olympics, and never once has an individual event failed to inspire and amaze.
It could be the first round of fencing. It could be the final moments in wrestling. No matter the stage of the competition, each of the competitors has devoted their lives to this moment in a way they’ve never done before, each of them fighting not for some professional team or college sweater or rich sponsor, but for their country.
Unlike in virtually every other major sporting event, the Olympics are all about patriotism, pure and simple and chilling. To see hundreds of athletes scrambling for a scrap of a flag or a hint of an anthem catches somewhere beyond the mere chants of “USA, USA,” catches somewhere deep in the soul.
Team USA gold medalist wrestler Amit Elor celebrates in the pit at the Stade de France during the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics on Sunday.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Hint: Buy tickets to a medal event, any medal event. In watching the ensuing podium ceremony, guaranteed, you will cry. Even if you’ve never heard of the winning athlete and are not particularly fond of their anthem, you will cry.
To see a lone figure triumphantly representing an entire country with their hand over their heart and the voice booming out words is one the coolest things in sports.
Now, to see it happen to an American in America? That’s worth rushing to la28.org and getting in line now.
The venues are historic. The venues are ready. The venues are perfect.
The gymnastics will be at Crypto.com Arena, a place where Kobe once climbed on a scorer’s table as if it was a balance beam.
The track and field will be — where else? — at a Coliseum where folks are still talking about Rafer Johnson’s ascent into heaven in 1984.
An artist’s rendering of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics swimming venue at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
(LA28)
The swimming will be at SoFi Stadium, and, really, how cool is that? The last time that place made national news, Aaron Donald was appropriately finishing off a Super Bowl championship with a swim move.
Dodger Stadium is, of course, a natural for baseball, maybe good enough to persuade Major League Baseball to shut down for two weeks and allow its athletes to compete.
And while nobody yet knows what it’s like to watch basketball at the Intuit Dome, it is supposed to contain this wall of sound, which will make life hell for all the other countries.
In all, it should be an incredible ride, one which officially began Sunday with Tom Cruise theatrically dropping into the Stade de France and carrying the Olympic flag via plane and motorcycle across the world to Venice Beach. Once there, the star of these Olympics was among various local artists welcoming the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics with the brightest of hopes.
They’ll always have Paris.
But we’ll always have Snoop.
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Sports
Commentary: ‘I don’t want any handouts.’ Amid the Angels’ drought, a starry homecoming for Mike Trout
Mike Trout last played in an All-Star Game seven years ago. It’s crazy, really. The best player of the previous decade, the link that ties Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, has not taken an All-Star at-bat this decade.
Injuries, mostly. And he turns 35 next month.
Next week’s All-Star Game takes place in Philadelphia, about 40 miles north of Trout’s hometown of Millville, N.J. Major League Baseball reserves a potential All-Star roster spot or two each summer for distinguished players: Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander this year, Clayton Kershaw last year, Pujols and Miguel Cabrera in past years.
That could have been Trout’s spot this summer: a worthy honor for a three-time most valuable player, a local hero feted on the national stage the Angels have failed to provide him.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Trout said.
Not even at home?
“It’s an honor to get voted in and represent the American League,” he said. “For me, I don’t want any handouts.”
Trout is an All-Star for the 12th time, the old-fashioned way: He earned it.
Fans voted him into the starting lineup, with the most final-round votes of any AL outfielder. His peers voted him as one of the top three outfielders in the AL.
“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot of hurdles, a lot of adversity. I put some hard work in, and I did not let up. I could have easily got down on myself and not pushed through it and not come back.
“I know what I am capable of. I know I have the confidence to get back to the player I used to be.”
His .874 OPS entering play Thursday ranks second among AL outfielders, a career season for many players. In 11 of his 14 full seasons — all but the previous three — he has posted a higher OPS.
In April, in a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Trout hit five home runs and drove in nine runs.
“Everything was clicking,” he said. “When I first came up, that’s how I felt the whole season.
“Just to be able to get that feeling back, that little spark, to know it’s still in there, it makes you feel pretty good.”
For him, so does playing in Philadelphia. The first time he played there with the Angels, Millville basically closed down for the night, and just about everyone in town boarded a bus to the game. Then Trout had an exceptionally rare experience, a visiting player cheered at the home of the boo.
Mark Gubicza can testify to that. Gubicza, the two-time All-Star pitcher and now the Angels’ television analyst, grew up in Philadelphia.
“I don’t care if you were God himself, if you were wearing a different color uniform, I was still booing you,” Gubicza said. “But he was cheered.”
Still is. Trout is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan, with his season tickets not in some climate-controlled luxury suite but along the sideline.
“The players all walk by him and say ‘Trouty!’ ” Gubicza said. “Before they all go out to get their heads beat in, they’re all saying hi.
“He’s not one of those guys that comes there to be seen. He’s going there to root. That’s why they love him: He’s one of us.”
Said Trout: “I know how passionate I am about the Eagles. From my experience as an Eagles fan, it’s just different.
“It’s like win or die.”
It’s not like that in Southern California, where almost no one listens to sports-talk radio, and where a nice day is always a day away.
No one would begrudge Trout for living year-round along the Orange County coast. (OK, maybe Philadelphia fans would.)
Roy Hallenbeck, Trout’s high school coach, remembered visiting years ago on what he called “a perfect day” and asking Trout how he could ever get tired of all that sunshine.
“Yeah, coach, I couldn’t live here,” Trout told him. “‘I need my seasons.”
Trout built a family home near his boyhood home. He built his Trout National golf resort, with a course designed by Tiger Woods, in Millville.
He is as loyal to the Angels as he is to Millville. He appreciates the team that “took a chance on a kid from a little town in southern New Jersey” and signed him to two nine-figure contract extensions.
Trout was the last Angels player to take a postseason at-bat, in 2014. Even amid baseball’s longest playoff drought, he still considers Anaheim a special place, and always will.
“It’s where it all began,” Trout said. “I think the fuel of people doubting us kind of makes it more of a fire for me to try to get back to the playoffs. I think that’s the biggest key for me.
“Could I take the easy way out and just leave? Yeah. But I think — I said this last year around this time, but it’s the same feeling I’ve been having — I really haven’t sat down and talked to anybody about it specifically, but I know there’s a time where, if things change, who knows? I don’t know. But, for me, right now, my focus is on trying to get this club back in the playoffs.”
At the All-Star Game, Trout might well hear Phillies fans beseech him to come play for the home team. However, Hallenbeck said, the hometown folks no longer are as strident in that long-held wish.
“I think the overriding sentiment of most people I talk with, even Phillies fans, is we would all — as people that know him, love him and care for him — love to watch him play relevant baseball in August and September,” Hallenbeck said. “It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter who. Just being relevant late in the season would be something we would all love to see.
“Hopefully, it’s with the Angels. They’ve been so good to him. We’d love to see it there.”
So would we. In the meantime, in the absence of a World Series, Trout deserves to enjoy his homecoming game.
Sports
London descends into disorder as Morocco fans flood streets after World Cup elimination by France
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Public unrest began in parts of London late Thursday night, and it appears Morocco’s exit from the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the hands of France is the reason.
France took down Morocco 2-0, eliminating the African country for the second consecutive tournament, this time in a quarterfinal match.
As a result, many feared Paris would erupt into riots, especially after the chaos that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s UEFA Champions League victory over Arsenal in May.
Instead, images and videos from Edgware Road in northwest London showed police clashing with large crowds as smoke billowed through the streets and debris littered the roadway.
A police vehicle is parked in a road as people from pro-Palestinian activist groups gather near the Edgware United Synagogue during a demonstration against the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” organized by real-estate agency My Home in Israel, which markets property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in London, Britain, June 14, 2026. (Toby Shepheard)
Riot police, equipped with shields and body armor, tried to contain the crowds as they clashed with people launching fireworks and throwing debris. One video also appeared to show an officer down.
KYLIAN MBAPPÉ, OUSMANE DEMBÉLÉ FIRE FRANCE INTO WORLD CUP SEMIFINALS WITH WIN OVER MOROCCO
It’s unknown what happened to the officer who was down on the asphalt or how he was injured.
Fans waved Moroccan flags in the middle of the streets, which held up traffic. Some even jumped on top of vehicles trying to get through the area.
Moroccan fans in the stands before a FIFA World Cup 2026 quarterfinal match between France and Morocco at Boston Stadium July 9, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (Richard Sellers/SportsphotoAllstar)
Similar scenes unfolded after Egypt’s World Cup exit, when Argentina rallied for a controversial 3-2 victory that featured several disputed officiating decisions.
Paris, on the other hand, looked more like a city celebrating than one on the brink of a riot. Supporters of both France and Morocco flooded the streets, slowing traffic in several parts of the city.
One video showed horns blasting from cars with French and Moroccan flags out the windows on the L’avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Supporters on the side of the road, waving their own flags, joined in on the celebration.
France’s Kylian Mbappé scored his eighth goal of this World Cup, which ties him for the most with Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Ousmane Dembélé also scored in the second half for France in the 2-0 win over Morocco.
It’s the third straight semifinal appearance for France, while Morocco still made World Cup history despite the loss. After becoming the first African country to reach the quarterfinals and semifinals in World Cup history in 2022, Morocco added to that by becoming the first-ever African nation to reach more than one quarterfinal.
Moroccan fans react while attending a watch party for the World Cup round of 8 match between France and Morocco in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 2026. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP)
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Morocco’s exit means there are no more African nations alive in the World Cup. France will be taking on the winner of Spain and Belgium, while England and Norway and Argentina and Switzerland face off in the quarterfinals.
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