The warm-up pool used at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials will be heading to California after the conclusion of that meet, as a California group called the Santa Ynez Valley Community Aquatics Foundation has purchased the much-sought-after pool.
Olympic gold medalist Gary Hall, Jr is part of the Santa Ynez group, and told SwimSwam the pool would be moving to the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School, where it will sit near a $5 million football, track and tennis facility to create a Sports Science Institute for the area.
Hall said the facility will institute a joint use agreement that allows public access to the facilities and programming at the Sports Science Institute.
According to some architectural renderings (courtesy of Hall), the 50-meter pool will be an outdoor facility surrounded by spectator seating and beside what appears to be a second short course pool.
You can view the renderings here:
“The Sports Science Institute will focus on health and wellness, research, chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, physical therapy, rehab, special needs and rejuvenation medicine all under the banner of sports medicine,” Hall said. “The intention is to create a model that can utilize health insurance billing as a means of sport program sustainability.”
Sports medicine has long been a passion for Hall, Jr, who famously overcame type-1 diabetes during a swimming career that netted him 5 Olympic golds over 3 Olympic Games.
There was a competitive market bidding for the Olympic Trials warm-up pool, but the Santa Ynez group has sealed the deal with a deposit and a Myrtha contract, ending the competitive bidding process.
Both Olympic Trials pools are now sold, with the competition pool heading to Fargo, ND.
Does it come with water? That’s kind of in short supply in Santa Ynez…
I’m very interested in the economics of this. I would think that the labor and site-specific engineering costs would represent the bulk of the expense of building a long-course pool, with materials being a relatively minor component of the cost. So, how does the cost of buying the OT warmup pool compare with the cost of buying a brand new pool from Myrtha?
How does the pool get there exactly? Quite curious
Iswimz – it comes apart into pieces, then they put it on trucks and ship it.