BY ROD JONES
OCU MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
Panel discussion covers highlights of landing Olympic Games
In October 2018, freshly elected Mayor David Holt sat in a booth at Red Prime Steakhouse in downtown Oklahoma City, sharing dinner with then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Over steaks, Garcetti leaned in and asked a question that sounded almost absurd for a landlocked Midwestern city: What would you think about hosting the Olympic whitewater events in 2028?
“This was 10 years out from the Olympics," Mayor Holt recalled to the audience in Oklahoma City University’s Kerr McGee Auditorium late last month during the annual Martha Jean Lemon Distinguished Speaker Series. “I’m a sports fan, and I certainly understand the magnitude of the Olympics... From the first moment those types of possibilities were presented to us, we were like a dog on a bone. We were never gonna let that chance slip past us.”
That dinner sparked a six-year courtship involving constant communications, a clandestine visit from the LA28 chairman, global pandemic delays and the addition of a second sport — softball — in 2023.
Now, the secret is fully out. The 2026 edition of the Lemon Distinguished Speaker Series on Sept. 22 brought together the key architects behind what Holt calls a “once-in-a-lifetime” historic triumph. When the Summer Games arrive in July 2028, Oklahoma City will be the only city outside Southern California to host the entirety of two Olympic sports — Slalom Paddle and Softball — totaling 16 consecutive days of world-class competition.
Even more remarkable for the panel discussion’s host campus, OCU President Kenneth Evans confirmed in April that OCU will serve as the only official Olympic Satellite Village outside of California, housing international athletes in a collegiate setting designed to mirror UCLA’s version in Los Angeles.
From ‘ditch’ to rapids
The path to hosting the games was carved out over decades through bold civic vision and improbable leaps of faith. Literally carved out, in some cases.
Panelist Mike Knopp, founder of RIVERSPORT, recounted his transition from an attorney to a watersports pioneer. Inspired by a road trip to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Knopp and his wife returned home determined to bring rowers to the North Canadian River, which at the time was little more than a dry, weed-filled drainage ditch.
Holt noted that in 1993, voters passed MAPS 1 to put dams on the river purely for aesthetic purposes.
“We were sick of mowing it twice a year,” Holt laughed. “Not a single person in the campaign had ever uttered a thought about rowing.”
Knopp convinced OCU to start a club rowing program, hiring him for a salary of just $1 a year. He lobbied local philanthropists for a boathouse, eventually prompting OCU to launch a varsity program. That momentum built toward the 2009 MAPS 3 initiative, where voters approved a $45 million artificial whitewater facility. Opened in 2016, it remains the only urban whitewater course west of the Mississippi River.
Building global credibility took relentless relationship-building. Knopp recalled hosting international teams for early regattas, pulling whatever strings necessary to earn the commitment of governing bodies.
“The Czech Republic team said they would come if they could ride Harleys on Route 66,” Knopp laughed. “So I said, ‘We’ll do it!’ And we did. They loved it.”
When LA28 decided on a “no-build” strategy to avoid constructing a costly temporary whitewater venue in California, Oklahoma City’s world-class venue and decades of cultivated trust made OKC the obvious choice.
Rounding the bases for softball
While whitewater was a relatively recent triumph, Oklahoma City’s bond with softball spans nearly half a century.
Craig Cress, CEO of USA Softball and a Hall of Fame umpire, detailed how the Amateur Softball Association relocated its headquarters to OKC in the late 1960s. The city’s status as the undisputed “Softball Capital of the World” was cemented in 1990 when it became the permanent home of the NCAA Division I Women’s College World Series.
In a turn of history, Cress noted that the original seed money for OKC’s main softball stadium came directly from the surplus revenues generated by the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. The organizing committee from those games established the Olympic Partner program for sports development across the country.
Later came the bad news. Cress explained how softball was voted off the Olympic program in 2005 by a heartbreaking single vote (tying 52-52 when a 50%+1 majority was required). But when the U.S. won the right to host the 2028 Games, sports leaders immediately looked for ways to reinstate softball.
Initial plans for 2028 considered host venues in California, but practical roadblocks emerged. Playing at Angel Stadium would have meant shutting down an MLB stadium mid-season to rip up sod for a dirt infield. Meanwhile, UCLA’s home field was ruled out because International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules forbid official competition at the site chosen for the main Olympic Village.
The turning point came in March 2023 during the World Baseball Classic in Miami. Sitting with international sports executives and LA28 officials, Cress was asked point-blank: Where is the best softball facility in the world?
“I just said, ‘Well, I’m biased, but the only one I really recommend is in Oklahoma,’” Cress recalled. He asked if LA28 would be open to hosting an event outside California. “And that was the first time I really put it out there.”
It turned out LA28 had already been (secretly) talking to OKC officials about whitewater. Thanks to $65 million in taxpayer-approved bonds since 2017, OKC’s Devon Park stands 2.5 times larger than any other softball venue on Earth.
“What other city in the world has spent $65 million on softball facilities since 2017?” Holt noted. “We did all that with no expectation of a Summer Olympics. And yet, here we are.”
It takes a village
With the events officially sanctioned, attention has turned to execution. Michael Byrnes, former chief executive of OKC’s Triple-A baseball franchise, was recruited last year to lead Team OKC, the local organizing committee managing the games in partnership with LA28.
“Something that’s truly unique to these Olympic Games is to essentially have a second organizing committee,” Byrnes explained. While LA28 manages broadcasting, sport execution, and technology, Team OKC will coordinate dozens of other operational areas locally, spanning security, transit, vendor operations and volunteer networks.
Byrnes also shed light on why OCU was chosen over local commercial hotels to house hundreds of Olympic competitors. While the LA28 group was in town for the Women’s College World Series on a site visit, they checked out the OCU campus and fell in love with its compact footprint and security perimeter.
OCU will host nearly 300 beds for slightly less than 200 athletes, plus coaches, officials and support staff. Because the village utilizes a compact footprint of less than a handful of nearby buildings, normal summer university operations will continue as seamless as possible.
“Almost every time we’ve toured LA28 representatives through the dorms, someone says, ‘We could move them in today,’” Byrnes said. “The critical underlying motivation was that we want our athletes here to have as close of an experience to the athletes in Los Angeles as possible.”
All eyes on OKC
For 16 straight days in July 2028, Oklahoma City will command a unique spotlight on global television. Most OKC events will start at 9 a.m. CDT (7 a.m. PDT in Los Angeles). Because Los Angeles will not yet have started its competition day, Oklahoma City will be the only live Olympic event location airing worldwide during that morning broadcast window. Viewers around the globe will watch Slalom Paddle (formerly called Canoe Slalom) against the downtown OKC skyline and softball at Devon Park.
While Slalom Paddle athletes will remain in OKC to compete on “Day Zero” (the morning of the Opening Ceremony), USA Softball may fly its athletes to Los Angeles for the Opening Ceremony before returning to OKC for competition, then flying back to LA for the Closing Ceremony on July 30.
Beyond the immediate economic surge in hotel taxes and tourism, Mayor Holt sees the Games as a permanent catalyst for Oklahoma City’s global brand, much like the arrival of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder’s run to the world championship last year (and a run at a championship before then) offered a preview of what it’ll be like to have the world’s attention.
“People don’t visit, invest in or live in cities they’ve never heard of,” Holt said. “If you have an NBA team or you host the Olympics, they’re going to hear about you. It’s part of our brand now that we’ve hosted events in the Summer Olympics. We’ll be talking about it for decades to come.”
