Each year on June 23rd sport communities unite across the world as they participate in Olympic Day, which commemorates the day in 1894 when Baron Pierre de Coubertin began working to create the modern Olympic Games. Two years later the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece.
This year we celebrated Olympic Day with over 500 youth from Los Angeles in a fun-filled event hosted by the LA 2024 Exploratory Committee and the LA84 Foundation at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. We were proud to be sponsors of this event and had a wonderful time enjoying the day with the students.
Various sporting clubs from the Los Angeles area volunteered their time to teach nine different sports to the youth. For many of the students this was their first encounter with some of the sports, such as Archery, Badminton, Fencing, and Sitting Volleyball. Other sports included in the event were Soccer, Rugby, Volleyball, Gymnastics, and Rowing.
In addition to learning and playing new and familiar sports, youth also wrote “Letters to Rio,” encouraging Team USA Olympians and Paralympians, crafted their own medals to take home, wrote messages on a banner for athletes training for Rio, and got their faces painted.
In kicking off the event, LA2024 Chairman Casey Wasserman asked, “After all, what’s better than playing sports all day?” When it’s a day as fun, lively, and educational as the 2016 Olympic Day in Los Angeles, we say nothing is better than playing sports all day!
Highlights from the day are in the slideshow below. Many thanks go to LA84 Foundation and LA2024, as well as all of the sports clubs and youth groups who participated to make this 2016 Olympic Day a tremendous success!
[fsg_gallery id=”18″]
