Biles and Ledecky for 2028? Home Olympics will be a lure for Team USA veterans

The run-up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics officially began on Sunday night with a closing ceremony at the Stade de France featuring a “death-defying stunt” by Tom Cruise – who repelled off the stadium to collect the Olympic flag before riding off to LA through the streets of Paris – with performances by California emissaries Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

But for more than a few American athletes, the countdown to LA 2028 began at some point over the past two weeks after their business here in Paris was finished and they began openly weighing their own missions impossible: extending their careers for a chance to compete in an Olympics on home soil when they might otherwise be riding off into the sunset.

Like the rest of the world, the senior members of the US Olympic delegation have watched from front-row seats as Léon Marchand, Teddy Riner, Antoine Dupont and the Brothers Lebrun became figures of national obsession at a Summer Games where even the too-cool-for-school Parisiens couldn’t help but get swept away in the excitement. Their exploits have been unavoidable over the past two weeks even to non-sports fans, their profiles larger by multiples than if they’d chased down glory in Tokyo or Rio.

For someone like Katie Ledecky, making a go for LA 28 would be a case of taking a victory lap before a home crowd. The nine-time Olympic gold medalist, who became the most decorated female US Olympian in any sport last week, is one of many Americans who have gone on record saying they’d love to compete in LA, where the swimming program will take place before a roaring mass of 38,000 spectators at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, by far the largest natatorium in Olympic history. She will be 31 then, but after watching her win the women’s 1500m by more than 10 seconds, it’s hard to doubt she’d be up for the task.

“Seeing the kind of support the French athletes are getting here, I think all of the US athletes are thinking about how cool that could be in Los Angeles, having the home crowd,” she said. “That would be amazing.”

Same for Ryan Crouser, who last week became the first shot putter to win three straight Olympic golds. He will be 35 when the cauldron is lit in Exposition Park, but could he really pass up the opportunity to win a historic fourth at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the 1932 and 1984 Games took place?

“For now, I’m enjoying the moment,” Crouser said. “As an American athlete, to have the opportunity to hang up my shoes on American soil at a home Olympics would be a dream come true. It’s a long ways off. I don’t know how [silver medalist Joe Kovacs] is doing it at 35. I’m feeling it at 31. If I can channel my inner Joe, I would love to go to 2028.”

Having only just become the oldest Olympic gymnastics all-around winner in 72 years, Simone Biles will be 31 when the Los Angeles Games begin. But it’s a good bet that we’ll see her there in some form, perhaps as a specialist, most likely after the same two-year break she took after Rio and Tokyo.

“You never say never,” Biles said this week. “The next Olympics is on home turf, so you never know.”

Even those with Sharpie-drawn future plans like the 30-year-old fencer Lee Kiefer, who is due to return to her third year of medical school after a Paris fairytale that ended with her second and third golds, acknowledged that a home Olympics could be too hard to pass up. The temptation could be even stronger for those who fell short of their dreams like 29-year-old skateboarder Nyjah Huston, whose bronze in the men’s street final improved on a shock seventh-place finish in Tokyo.

“I have to give it my best shot,” Huston said. “Skateboarding is not easy, it’s hard stuff we do out there, it’s tough on the body. At my age now, I’m 29, I’ve been skating in professional contests for 18 years and it’s not easy keeping up with these guys.”

Of course home town glory is only part of the equation. LA 28 will be awash in head-spinning sums of money, taking place smack in the middle of an eight-year span – #decadeofsport – where the US will host the Summer and Winter Olympics in addition to the men’s and women’s Fifa World Cups. At a time when truly mass audience events are harder and harder to come by for marketers, brands have become increasingly eager to associate themselves with the Olympic movement and sports at large. By the time President Logan Paul declares Salt Lake City 2034 open from a veranda inside Rice-Eccles Stadium, there stands to be hundreds of US Olympians who have earned more through sponsorship deals than they could have imagined when they devoted their lives to sports that generally don’t make you rich or famous.

LA28 organizers, Team USA and Comcast have set an ambitious domestic corporate sponsorship goal of $2.5bn, nearly a billion dollars more than a Paris haul that exceeded Tokyo’s number by 70%. “It’s big and audacious but that’s what we’re about,” LA28 chief commercial officer Chris Pepe told Sportico last year. “We feel really good about where we are today.”

The cocktail of fortune and glory could be too much to pass up for Team USA’s elder statespeople, who can’t afford to waste time feeling their years. Those four years will go by faster than you think.