The Agents of Change

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As he took a seat in the wood-paneled press room off his City Hall office, flanked by the flags of Los Angeles and the United States, L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti tried to articulate his somewhat unusual frame of mind.

His boyhood dream of bringing the Olympics back to Los Angeles appears to be on the verge of becoming reality. But there will be no singular moment of celebration, no anxious wait for International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach to open an envelope and cue a fireworks show in the Southern California sky.

"Usually you have five plazas around the world, four crying and one celebrating," Garcetti told ESPN.com in late June. "This is going to be a slow dual win. The IOC will make an announcement that they are going to move forward with dual bids and then we will know we've won. Both of us."

Garcetti was referring to two cities and their chief executives. He and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo have put themselves on the line for their cities' respective Olympic bids, and Paris and Los Angeles are the last two players standing in a battle of attrition.

It has been a bid campaign like no other, featuring two forceful, dynamic personalities 5,642 miles apart: Garcetti, fueled by a lifelong desire to bring the Games back to his hometown, and Hidalgo, a late convert who now sees the event as a way to throttle up positive change. Both have made themselves indispensable in lobbying other politicians, the public and Olympic sports officials.

The two mayors, who are friends, have gone to great lengths to point out what distinguishes the bids. But the truth is that the blueprints have a lot in common. Both rely on existing facilities, emphasize what will be left behind and focus on environmental and social issues. The mayors are also similar: politically left of center, with multicultural backgrounds, leadership roles in climate change activism, and tricky relationships with their countries' presidents.

While voters and politicians in other cities fled the Olympic sweepstakes, fearful of runaway costs for a 2 ?-week party, Paris and Los Angeles are offering the International Olympic Committee more than a decade of stability for its flagship event.