Roseyland

Over the 4th of July weekend, I was lucky enough to go to the United States Olympic Swimming Trials in Omaha, Nebraska. I’ve always been a big fan of swimming. When I was kid, I would spend hours and hours swimming in any pool I could find, and in high school, I was on the school swim team. I watch as much swimming as possible when the Olympics come around, so when my Dad got tickets to the Olympic Trials, I had to go. Here is a picture of the Quest Center where the trials took place.

One of the most amazing things about the Olympic Trials was the pool. The Quest center contains a fairly large basketball or hockey style arena, but it does not normally contain a pool. They actually built a temporary pool inside the arena. The surface of the pool is about 10 feet above the arena floor, and the first 10 rows of seating are covered by the pool deck.

Okay, I’m taking a slight detour here. Since I was in Omaha, I had to stop at one of my favorite restaurants, Spaghetti Works. This is a picture of the beer cheese sauce that I am obsessed with, and that I tried to recreate in this post and this post. This is also almost a picture of my Dad’s crotch. Try to focus on the beer cheese.

And now back to swimming. Here is a picture of a picture of the building of the pool inside the arena. This picture makes the pool look a little bit shallow, but it was actually 10 feet deep and held around 1 million gallons of water. A typical residential pool contains something like 15 to 20 thousand gallons of water.

Here is a picture of the Olympic swimming suits. They are made out of a high tech material that is supposed to have less drag than shaved human skin. They also cost about $500. I touched them, and they felt like any other suit to me. A quick Rosey factoid: before my last high school swim meet, I shaved my entire body. It definitely made me faster, but it’s not something I’d ever do again.

We were right across the arena from Bob Costas. If you look closely at the picture below, you can see him talking to the camera.

The setting for the trials was amazing. I have been to many swim meets, but none of them were anything like this. I struggled to get a good picture of the pool, arena, and people, but it was just too much to fit into one picture. Then I remembered that my camera takes videos. So I tried it, and I’m actually impressed. This isn’t great video or anything, but it’s more than I was hoping for from my little digital camera. This is a video of the crowd doing the wave before the first event on July 4th. I think it gives you a good feeling of what it was like inside the arena.

The video above is actually a lot like my high school swim meets. You know, minus the people doing the wave, the people coming to watch who aren’t parents of somebody swimming, the music, the lighting effects, the announcer, the near world record times, the national TV coverage, but other than that it was pretty much the same. The picture below is of the semifinals for the women’s 50 meter freestyle. The 50s were fun, because they started right in front of our seats.

The next picture is of the Men’s 100 fly. The swimmer in the 5th lane up (actually lane 4, the first lane isn’t used) is Michael Phelps.

Whenever a swimmer broke an American or World Record, pyrotechnics went off next to the pool. Fire and water, you’ve gotta love that. This is another thing that they did not have at my high school swim meets.

I saw two World Records broken and one tied at the trials. There were also a lot of American Records broken.

They also had cool award ceremonies during the trials. The picture below is Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte on their way to the ceremony for the 200 meter individual medley.

This is the award ceremony for the women’s 100 meter freestyle. On the podium are Dara Torres, Natalie Coughlin, Lacey Nymeyer, and Jessica Hardy (I think). This picture shows Jenny Thompson putting a medal around the neck of the 41 year old Dara Torres who is holding her two year old daughter. Now that’s cool.

Finally, here is a big group of Olympic swimmers on the award podium from the last night that I was able to go to the trials. Unfortunately, I don’t know who they all are, but you can see the Olympic swimming roster here.

The Olympic trials were awesome. To be honest, I was afraid they would be a little boring. I’ve been to a lot of swim meets, and they usually involve sitting in the hot sun watching heat after heat of people swim the same race over and over. The trials were much more exciting though. The best part is, I feel like I get to do it all over again when the Olympics come around next month. It will be amazing to see the same athletes on TV that I saw in person only a few weeks earlier. There are a lot more pictures and a few videos on my Flickr page here. Go USA!