It’s Unique Spot to Park a Pool
A parking lot near the Long Beach Arena will soon be transformed into the site of a unique outdoor water-sports festival.
Construction will start Wednesday on the foundation for two temporary above-ground pools that will be used in June and July for the U.S. Olympic swim trials, a Grand Prix swim meet, a synchronized swimming festival, and men’s and women’s water polo tournaments.
The first pieces of the competition pool and warmup pool will be assembled on May 4, then the race will then be on to finish by a target date of June 4. The construction of a 50-meter pool normally takes six to eight months, according to Trevor Tiffany, president of Myrtha USA, which designed and will build the pools.
“We’ve basically got a month,” he said.
Myrtha is a division of A&T; SPA of Castiglione, Italy, which built the water polo pool at the 1996 Atlanta Games, as well as temporary and permanent pools for world and European championships.
The competition pool will have an innovative water distribution system as well as ceramic gutters and other features designed to create ideal conditions. The warmup pool will be tailored to include sprint lanes, at swimmers’ request.
To promote swimmers’ preparation for the Athens Olympics, the blocks and end walls will be identical to those at the Games.
The first event will be the Janet Evans Invitational Grand Prix meet, June 10-13. But before the first drop of chlorine is added and swimmers take the plunge, a dye will be put into the water to show health department officials that the filtration system can circulate water properly.
“For all intents and purposes, when you go to this pool, it will look exactly like any California pool that you’ll go to, permanent,” Tiffany said.
Myrtha has been making pools for 40 years, temporary pools since 1987. It has built on an Italian tennis court but never on a parking lot.
“We’ve had to cater within the design of the pool to be aware that after building the pool, something could happen, and we need to be able to readjust the pool,” Tiffany said.
“The slope of the parking lot is interesting, so that raises challenges for the actual building. But the weight of ... the concrete [foundation] that goes on the parking lot, you have to hope the engineers are good engineers and their work is correct. They’re saying this loading can basically sink two or three inches. We don’t believe that will happen, but we obviously have to be ready in case it does happen because we can’t have our pools sinking two or three inches. Our pools have to be perfectly level.”
The water will weigh much more than the pool structures, which will arrive from Italy in 180 pieces. A deck that will be nine feet off the ground and stands to seat 10,000 people will be constructed.
The pools will cost the local Long Beach organizing committee about $2.5 million, some of which will be recouped through ticket sales and sale of the pools themselves.
After the final event -- the FINA men’s water polo World League Superfinal -- the pools will be disassembled and shipped to new homes. The city of Yucaipa bought the competition pool, and a swim club in Berkeley Heights, N.J., bought the warmup pool.
“For future events, this will set the benchmark,” Tiffany said.
Here and There
Fencing’s Division I elite championships began Friday in Atlanta and will end with the announcement of the U.S. team for Athens. Jason Rogers of Los Angeles, ranked third in the U.S. in men’s sabre, and Soren Thompson of San Diego, third in men’s epee, have clinched spots. The men’s sabre, epee and foil teams qualified for the Games.
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Ronda Rousey of Santa Monica won the gold medal in the 63kg weight class at the Pan American Judo Union Championships in Venezuela on Tuesday, giving the U.S. a berth at that weight in the women’s Olympic judo competition. The U.S. also qualified in the women’s 70kg and 78kg events, as well as the men’s 81 kg event.
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The men’s world hockey championships, which begin today in Prague and Ostrava in the Czech Republic, will influence which teams go to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Officials of the International Ice Hockey Federation will rank teams based on the results of the tournament and other events, and the top eight will qualify. The U.S., which is ranked seventh, opens against Finland today at Ostrava.
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Greco-Roman wrestler Rulon Gardner, whose upset of Russia’s Alexander Karelin was one of the biggest of the Sydney Games, underwent surgery April 16 after dislocating his right wrist while playing pickup basketball. Three pins were inserted to stabilize the wrist. Gardner lost to Dremiel Byers at the U.S. championships and faces a tough road to earn a return trip to the Olympics. “I’ll be able to get into condition,” he said Friday, a day after returning to the mat.
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Only 111 days until the Athens Summer Games.
