The entire leadership needs to be dumped, imo. Clean house, they are totally pathetic.
The amount of money and effort they put into building this single use venue is staggering, it's a level of repulsive greed and excess that USATF could only dream of doing. building a swimming event in a football stadium that will be torn down after is one of the most outrageous wastes of money I've ever seen. Lots of palms greased, lots of contracts being fed for payola. Dirty as dirty gets! I'll keep USATF, thank you.
Take a look at how we transformed Lucas Oil Stadium into our venue for the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Swimming!The action takes place June 15-23 in Indi...
wtf are you talking about. The pools get sold to groups who reassemble them for use as permanent facilities. Ocala got the practice pool from the previous Trials, Minneapolis got the competition pool, and this Trials' pools are going to the Cayman Islands (warmup pool) and Fort Wayne (competition pool).
wtf are you talking about. The pools get sold to groups who reassemble them for use as permanent facilities. Ocala got the practice pool from the previous Trials, Minneapolis got the competition pool, and this Trials' pools are going to the Cayman Islands (warmup pool) and Fort Wayne (competition pool).
You need to do your research and educate yourself, that's not how this was done. They may or may not try to sell it afterwards, but that's irrelevant to the point. The expenditure to get this done in the time frame it was accomplished was borderline criminal and they will NEVER get their money back from it. The cost to disassemble it and put it back to a NFL stadium will be more than the cost of the pool itself.
Ok, so how do we go about doing that exactly? Fans complain mostly by not attending their functions. So far, that's not working. Ill be sitting in my usual seats next week. Nobody is going to listen to me. USATF was selling 1980 retro uniforms and warmups at USATF meet in DesMoines one year as an anniversary nod but I was totally disgusted and told them so. They blew me off. Then I went down to the track and asked a personal friend of mine who made the 80 team what he thought and he said he was going to puke on the track in disgust. So again, how do we the fans have any impact on any decisions USATF makes other than just not show up at their meets? I want to support the athletes and they just want to get paid. FU for caring though is all we seem to get.
Probably had a bunch of the 80 jersey and warmups left over and wanted to make some extra money. Kinda like how they send shirts saying Super Bowl Champions from the team that loses the Super Bowl to Africa or something.
Funny you said that because swim fans thinks Rowdy Gaines is garbage. Looks like fans always have something to whine about.
Rowdy isn't perfect, they do need to try some new voices, but at least the swim announcers show some excitement. They are willing to talk about splits and don't make stupid comments like calling a women's 800 that goes out in 56.x a tactical race, etc.
I hope they get Phelps back in the booth for Paris. He had some great technical insights and I thought did very well in Tokyo.
Bottom line, everyone gripes about their announcing, but no one has better reason to gripe than track fans.
NBA fans who enjoy basketball probably have a bigger gripe. National announcers for TNT and ESPN are horrible. Nothing but hot takes. No actually basketball analysis, strategy breakdown, etc.
The entire leadership needs to be dumped, imo. Clean house, they are totally pathetic.
A big part of it is the difference in the pace of the meet. The swimmers come out, get on the blocks and go. There isn't 10 minutes of preening and posing before every single race just to get to the point of being able to start. Makes for a way better spectator experience.
Big swim meets have such a crazy number of races to get through, there just isn’t time to coddle people getting onto the blocks. The men’s 400 IM had 11 heats in the prelims- which takes a crazy long time to slog through in a morning session. (USA Swimming likes a big Trials meet, both to give the juniors some big meet experience and to select a team that’s less likely to be rattled by a big chaotic Olympic warm up pool experience)
I’m actually pretty impressed that USAS managed to make 11 heats of the men’s 400 IM relatively not boring. That’s not easy.
I’m also amused at the love for Rowdy here- he’s stuck dumbing it down for prime time a lot. When he calls a prelim session that only the hard core fans are following, he’s often got insightful things to say other than ‘he’s breathing in the right and can’t see Dressel!’
The point is that the pools are not going to waste. Does it still cost money? Yes. But they have built temporary pools for many years for Trials, just not in an NFL stadium. NFL stadiums are built to be multipurpose and reconfigurable. WTF do you think they do when those stadiums host Monster Truck races, for example?
I went to the swimming trials in person Sunday night. I can recognize a few names but I don't even follow swimming. It was a heck of a time, good production and presentation.
Also there were so many people wearing Caitlin Clark jerseys, they must be selling them at the expo. Absolute cultural phenomenon.
This. USA Swimming is heavily involved at every level of competition for swimming. They have a hand in everything. If you swim at all growing up, you pay into USA swimming and likely benefit at some level from them. The USATF meets look like child's play in comparison. I have a feeling former swimmers are much more likely to make donations to USA swimming because they feel more of a sense of connection, even subconsciously. Doesn't hurt that swimming is a rich sport. Maintaining a pool is expensive AF. Money is inherently tied into swimming.
Also I find it interesting the main sponsor for the trials is Lilly (drug company that produces Mounjaro). Listened to a podcast that said sales are currently outpacing Ozempic. I know Nike has deep pockets, but you cant beat a pharmaceutical company in today's world. And it is local to Indy. Hats off to USA Swimming.
Strong disagree. Track is more inherently appealing because you can see the athletes. But the difference in spectator enthusiasm is real. I coached youth track in Rockville MD and we would have a hard time to three or four parents to volunteer. In swimming, there are three volunteer timers for each lane alone! And about a dozen other volunteers floating around posting results, managing the automated timing system, announcing, sales, organizing kids, etc.
The main differences:
1) Swimming is a matter of neighborhood pride centered on the same neighborhood pool where people spend much of their summer. So people feel comfortable at meets and they know practically everyone there.
2) Pools are smaller and people feel free to get close. There's a kind of spatial / social organization to swim meets that is absent at track meets. It's easier to talk and pass information back and forth as people move fluidly around the pool, rather than staying stationary in stadium seating.
3) Swimming teams have a more defined structure, with team chants and, often, a dance routine at half time. Scores are read aloud at half time and at regular intervals thereafter, so that everyone knows when the meet is close.
4) In swimming, points from each age group contribute to the final score. Everyone has a stake in every event and strong participation over the entire age spectrum is needed to win. The final relay is a mixed age group relay, starting with a leg by the 15-18 year olds and ending with a leg by the 8 and unders. Imagine being 8 years old and having 200 people cheering you on, with the team win depending on your performance, and ultimately leading them to the win. That creates strong positive memories, reinforcing participation over the coming years.
5) Most meets are dual meets, making everything easier to manage. And competitions are more regular, with two meets (A meet and B meet) per week. Most kids do both meets, swimming their weaker events at the B meet and stronger events (if they are one of the best on the team) at the A meet. There's a sense of rhythm and consistent buy-in from parents / kids. Meets are typically close by--no more than a 30 minute drive.
Holding every major USA track event in Eugene is almost criminal incompetence.
People who don't watch track any other time will watch Olympic track and field. It's one of the pillars of coverage along with swimming. So the trials should be an exciting event for a city to host, bringing in those fans that only watch every four years to see it live. Instead it's in the middle of nowhere, where even die hard fans are sick of traveling after all the events there the last few years.
Stop with the Eugene hate, please. If you are getting on a plane to anywhere to watch a track meet, you are in the 0.0001% of sports fans. I know zero people who would fly to Indiana to watch track. Sorry, that is not happening. So unless you put it in Hawaii where I am going anyway, I am not flying to a track meet.
And secondly, feel free to give it a try. Host a meet, do the work. Build the stadium, find the volunteers, and handle the logistics of hosting a meet better than the ones I have been to in Eugene this year. If you do that, maybe I'll fly down to Sacramento or out to the Midwest.
I don't complain that the Kentucky Derby is always in BFE Kentucky every year, do I? The state of Oregon is home to Track and Field's culture in America, the same way Boston is home to our Marathon culture. That is just an historical fact.
You know who was born in Oregon? Ryan Crouser, Dick Fosbury, Ashton-Eaton, Steve Prefontaine, Dan O'Brien, Galen Rupp, Mac Wilkins (born in Eugene), Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight, etc. If your community has a stronger historical and cultural connection to the sport, I am sure it will bid to host the next big meet.
They were wearing the jerseys because her team played a game right before the finals a few blocks away. Duh. Did you see today how the WNBA is expected to lose $50 million this year?
There are 3.2 million people within 75 miles of Lexington, Kentucky, 4.86 million within 100 miles (easy driving distance for a one day event), but only 1.2 million within 75 miles of Eugene, Oregon, and 2 million within 100 miles.
Strong disagree. Track is more inherently appealing because you can see the athletes. But the difference in spectator enthusiasm is real. I coached youth track in Rockville MD and we would have a hard time to three or four parents to volunteer. In swimming, there are three volunteer timers for each lane alone! And about a dozen other volunteers floating around posting results, managing the automated timing system, announcing, sales, organizing kids, etc.
The main differences:
1) Swimming is a matter of neighborhood pride centered on the same neighborhood pool where people spend much of their summer. So people feel comfortable at meets and they know practically everyone there.
2) Pools are smaller and people feel free to get close. There's a kind of spatial / social organization to swim meets that is absent at track meets. It's easier to talk and pass information back and forth as people move fluidly around the pool, rather than staying stationary in stadium seating.
3) Swimming teams have a more defined structure, with team chants and, often, a dance routine at half time. Scores are read aloud at half time and at regular intervals thereafter, so that everyone knows when the meet is close.
4) In swimming, points from each age group contribute to the final score. Everyone has a stake in every event and strong participation over the entire age spectrum is needed to win. The final relay is a mixed age group relay, starting with a leg by the 15-18 year olds and ending with a leg by the 8 and unders. Imagine being 8 years old and having 200 people cheering you on, with the team win depending on your performance, and ultimately leading them to the win. That creates strong positive memories, reinforcing participation over the coming years.
5) Most meets are dual meets, making everything easier to manage. And competitions are more regular, with two meets (A meet and B meet) per week. Most kids do both meets, swimming their weaker events at the B meet and stronger events (if they are one of the best on the team) at the A meet. There's a sense of rhythm and consistent buy-in from parents / kids. Meets are typically close by--no more than a 30 minute drive.
Good info on swim meets. Didn't know about the mixed age-group race. Sounds like a camp color-war race, using all ages. Teams go crazy.
T&F is so unique. Just the social, economical and cultural differences a PAL team can have are so different! On my son's PAL team, the sprinters came from one neighborhood, the longer distance kids from another. (Maybe we should incorporate a mixed DMR of some type to rally everyone around the team.)
As it has been mentioned, swimming is still a rich person's sport, pool time, coaching, so different than T&F. When the kids have to be at the pool at 6AM and the parents are driving them, the camaraderie amongst them is quickly developed.
Indy would be a great place to return the USATF championships too.
Go to any track meet. One event will end at 12:02, the next one won't start until 12:10, then 12:20. If those two are 100m sprints, you've got 20 seconds of action and 28 minutes of downtime.
I get it to some extent -- track requires hurdle setup, moving the steeples, and so on. But it is designed to go so very slow, for very little reason. You don't need to watch a sprinter walk to their lane, spend two minutes setting up their blocks, do a start where they run 15m, and then jump up and down ten times before even getting called back to their blocks. It's all just so slow and boring.
This was an exciting race. Unlike T&F, you can't just add another swimmer to the final due to pool size. A tie for 8th place in the semifinals resulted in a swim-off for the final spot, a one-on-one duel between the tied athletes. And the swim-off was amazing!
After posting the same time in their 200m freestyle semifinals at Olympic Trials, Aaron Shackell and Daniel Diehl went head-to-head for the last spot in the ...
There are 3.2 million people within 75 miles of Lexington, Kentucky, 4.86 million within 100 miles (easy driving distance for a one day event), but only 1.2 million within 75 miles of Eugene, Oregon, and 2 million within 100 miles.
The problem is that we don't get to pick our origins and our history. The history of track in America isn't in NYC or LA. That is just a fact. Even little Crater HS in rural southern Oregon has more "love of the sport" and distance running success than schools in larger population centers. When it comes to "taking the sport seriously as fans" we are talking about passion and history and love of the sport, not total population.
If another community loves track more than Oregon, then I am sure they will start doing the work to put on a better meet than the ones in the Pacific NW. Hoka, Nike, Brooks, Adidas have their headquarters in the Northwest, but they could be wooed to host big meets elsewhere if the track community showed interest.
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