Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Olympic Games. Maybe it was crazy of us, but many American track & field fans assumed that that meant the Olympic Trials would also be held in LA. Give the facilities a test run… drum up local excitement around the sport… give everybody a break from Eugene and the logistical headaches and financial burdens that traveling there brings…

But no. In a press conference this past weekend with USATF CEO Max Siegel, LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman said that he didn’t think the planned track venue would host the 2028 Trials, basically because it would be too annoying while making final preparations for the big show.

With LA hosting not just the next Olympics but also now Grand Slam Track, too, it would have been a nice fit. The City of Angels may never truly become TrackTown, USA, but building up an enduring fan base in a large, international city by hosting a bunch of big, cool events there can’t be a bad idea for the sport’s growth, right?

Rather than waste a few hundred words speculating over which cities might have a genuine shot at hosting the 2028 Olympic Track & Field Trials… let’s just assume that it’s probably gonna be in Eugene again. That will surely anger a lot of diehard fans, but there are at least a few reasons it makes sense.

By North American standards, Eugene has decent summertime weather. Plenty of people like to toss Indianapolis as an alternative host – especially now that the U.S. Swimming Trials have packed the stands at Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Colts. But the reality is that any meet held outdoors in the Midwest this time of year is subject to extreme weather. Just ask any NCAA east regional qualifier who’s had to hunker down during a tornado warning at the meet hotel.

Eugene’s pollen count may approach city-sized beehive levels, but at least it’s rarely humid and, 10,000m notwithstanding, usually offering temperature ranges favorable to racing. And there’s been a ton of time and money poured into making the venue itself an awesome place to watch track. Old Hayward was charming and historic, but New Hayward is gorgeous and a truly state-of-the-art monument to the sport of track & field.

As recently as 2019, we were willing to host championships elsewhere (okay, it was also WHILE Hayward was under construction). Des Moines, Iowa, has many of the same drawbacks as Eugene, and while it’s equally inconvenient for athletes and fans regardless of where in the U.S. they live, making everybody suffer the same is not exactly tourism board material. Cities like New York and Philadelphia have – and do – host incredible high-quality meets like the NYC Grand Prix and the Penn Relays, and while Franklin Field has some wonky inner lane lengths that technically render it ineligible to host, it seems worth a shot to spend a little time looking for a workaround. But championship bids need organizations, institutions, and people power, and until someone steps up, we haven’t seen that kind of commitment out of cities easily distracted by their “big four” sports franchises.

No single host city is going to check all the boxes. Los Angeles comes close, except for the whole “willingness to actually host it” category. So let’s keep an open mind to new ideas and an open heart to the likely outcome that we’ll all be booking pricey tickets to Oregon once again in four years time.

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