By: Enoch Yeo

Soccer balls roll forward. Cars vroom past. The audience yells. The Los Angeles Coliseum can fit all sports, from ski jumping to NASCAR racing.

This year is the Coliseum’s 100th year of existence. Throughout the years, staff members at the Coliseum have improved the stadium a whole lot.

Stadium staff has learned several tricks to ease transitions to dirt, asphalt, ice, and snow from standard turf.

The ground manager Scott Lupold uses all his energy for these designs.

“Plenty of sleepless nights,” Lupold says. “I’m a worrier by nature.”

The history of these extreme transformation techniques starts in 1923.

One mistake occurred in the summer of 1936, when the Coliseum booked a champion figure skater, Sonja Henie, for a performance. Although the constructors laid coils across the field and used ice-making machines to create a rink, the refrigeration system could not prevent the ice from melting under the scorching sun.

There have been other issues, like a famously delayed ski jumping competition, but looking back on such interesting events, “there is a seduction of seeing it all through the lens of kitsch,” says William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. “The array is mind-boggling.”

After the officials realized that trying to heal the grass after races and concerts was of no avail, they ripped the grass off. They then unrolled new sod and planted new grass.

NASCAR engineers, seeing this new procedure and its wonderful result, ripped off the old ground and covered the playing surface in almost 14,000 cubic years of asphalt for a track in the winter of 2023.

“Anything that’s going to be out there for any length of time, when coupled with a lot of weight … the turf is pretty much toast underneath,” Lupold said.

Sources:

Keh, Andrew, “Transformative Coliseum: Multitude of sports, war shows, concerts, racing … all fit in,” The Los Angeles Times, Accessed on July 5, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2023-06-26/transformative-coliseum-100-years-war-shows-sports-concerts-grass-roots