Ride like an Olympian in Mission Viejo, California

The 1984 Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles.  The LA games have garnered a special place in the vast collection of Olympiads.  The success of the games was not so much in the arena of play because many Soviet bloc countries boycotted the games (in response to the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow games).  The success that people remember most was at the box office.  The ’84 games, unlike most games, made money.  The 1976 Olympics in Montreal was a financial bust.  For more recently history, some economists blame part of the financial meltdown in Greece on the country’s staggering losses endured preparing for and hosting the Athens games in 2004.   

The LA games were managed by Peter Ueberroth, a marketing whiz more than anything.  It was his idea to find sponsors willing to link their names and products to the games.  In cycling he managed to get a couple million dollars out of the Southland Corporation for the construction of the Olympic velodrome.  Southland-owned 7-11 was well represented during the cycling events inside the velodrome.  That’s just one example of the largesse corporate money brought to the Olympic movement.  Today, corporate sponsorship is everywhere.

The ’84 Olympic cycling program included the track and velodrome events but also the road course and for that we move to Mission Viejo.  The city of 100,000 was relatively new in 1984.  It was built from nothing, literally.  Mission Viejo was part of a wave of “planned communities” that popped up all over America in the 1960s and 70s.  The idea was an East Coast phenomenon.  The thinking was to take entirely barren tracts of land and build complete towns from scratch.  The first such project was in Virginia and the result was the town of Reston.  Later Columbia, Maryland was built.   

When open land became scarce on the East Coast builder’s looked west.  Orange County, California was ripe for the picking (excuse the pun).  Mission Viejo was completed in 1980 with some construction continuing to 1988.  The area was previously farm and grazing land nestled between the Saddleback Mountains.  Today it is 18 square miles of homes, shops, schools and more.  Lake Mission Viejo (pictured), a man-made water feature takes up about one square mile and is the crown jewel of the city.

Mission Viejo was home to the finish of 1984 Olympic Road Race course.  The race was held July 29, 1984 and with some help from sites like Map My Ride, today riders of all levels can take on the challenge of the final loop in Mission Viejo.  The loop is 9.85 miles and is hilly with both short, steep climbs as well as long gradual climbs.  If you can find parking, you will want to start on Olympiad Road (formerly O’Niell Road, it was renamed to honor the city’s contribution to the ’84 games).  After the Olympiad Road start you will head north skirting past the lake then through a gradual climb alongside Youth Athletic Park to a right turn at Marguerite Parkway.  This eventually leads to Hidalgo which then puts riders on a long descent down Vista Del Lago and then back onto Marguerite Parkway.  Turning left onto La Paz Road begins a category 5 climb (the easiest category of climbs) to the finish back on Olympiad.  With good weather and amenable traffic, riders should complete the loop in under one hour.  American Alexi Grewal won the gold medal that day back in 1984 with a total time of 4 hours, 59 minutes.  The complete course beginning in Los Angeles and concluding with the loop of Mission Viejo was a total of 118 miles.

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