Why USA Swimming Put a Pool in Lucas Oil Stadium for the Olympic Trials

Indianapolis has been the location for several firsts within the sports-event industry. It was the first Super Bowl host to organize a Fan Village in 2012, something the NFL now requires of any future host. It was the first city to host an entire NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

And this summer, Indianapolis will host the 2024 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials from June 15–23 at Lucas Oil Stadium, the first time the Trials have been staged on a football field.

“We had heard that USA Swimming was thinking of going a little bit bigger and we really wanted to try and do that here in Indianapolis,” said Sarah Myer, chief of staff and strategy for the Indiana Sports Corp. “We felt like this was something that we really wanted to do here.”

Seating for Thousands

The event will have a seating capacity of up to 35,000 and will be formatted in the same design as when the city has hosted the NCAA Men’s Final Four. Three temporary pools — two 50-meter and one 25-meter — will be installed over the field. With a multi-pool configuration, Lucas Oil Stadium will seat 32,000 fans.

The largest crowd for an indoor swim meet was 25,000 at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, according to the International Swimming Hall of Fame. As of last week, Indianapolis had already sold about 13,000 tickets for opening night.

“Ticket sales are great,” Myer said. “The momentum is really building and I think what people are starting to realize is how historic that this is going to be and how different it is going to be from what they’ve seen before. … A ton of swim clubs are coming, which is great, but we’re also really reaching out to that casual fan who may not be very interested in swimming but want to see a pool in Lucas Oil Stadium.”

It’s that mix of the swim fan and casual fan, plus Indianapolis’ location nationally, that was attractive to USA Swimming Chief Executive Officer Tim Hinchey.

“From a Trials perspective, it’s how do we activate a market? How do we get to the non-swim fans? How do we advertise our sport to other people?” Hinchey said earlier this year on the SportsTravel Podcast. “Approximately 25 percent of our membership, 350,000 people, can drive to Indianapolis in less than eight hours.”

The Indiana Convention Center, connected to the stadium and many downtown hotels, will host USA Swimming’s Toyota Aqua Zone, a fan-activation area. Georgia Street, a main thoroughfare in downtown that was the scene for the inaugural Super Bowl Village in 2012, will be home for USA Swimming Live with more activations and live music every day. There will also be on Georgia Street a 66-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower to reinforce what’s at stake for those competing in the pool — spots in the 2024 Olympic Summer Games in Paris.

“Whenever I talk in the community, people’s eyes get so wide about all the things that are going on and all the storytelling,” said Dan Gliot, senior director, marketing and communications for the Indiana Sports Corp. “That’s what makes Indianapolis so special is it’s not just the Trials and the event inside Lucas Oil Stadium, which raises eyebrows. It’s so many different parts of the community from arts and culture. It really is a community-based event and that’s what makes it really cool. For nine nights in the summer, it’s going to be a party atmosphere for everyone.”

“We’ve been designing and building downtown Indy for over 50 years to continually raise the bar for hosting major events,” sand Leonard Hoops, president and chief executive officer of Visit Indy. “Transforming downtown into an Olympic village will make this the most fan-centric USA Olympic Swimming Trials to date.”

Athletes Excited to Swim

Anticipation is also growing among the athletes that will be competing.

“I definitely think it’s exciting to say that you’re going to race at an NFL stadium,” said Kate Douglass during the U.S. Olympic Media Summit in mid-April in New York. “I think it can get a lot of other people who aren’t really into swimming to possibly watch the Olympic trials.”

“Being in a football stadium is crazy,” added Bobby Finke. “I wonder how big that tarp in the middle is going to be splitting the competition and warmup pools.”

(The answer: It’s very, very big.)

Indianapolis is also helped by the ability to put competition pools in unique locations.

“It’s great,” said Olympic swimming legend Janet Evans, who now works with LA28 ahead of its future Games. “To us, a pool in a football stadium is pretty interesting. We can drop pools anywhere, right? (The) 2004 Trials, we dropped a pool in a parking lot in the city of Long Beach. We can do great things and we can build great temporary venues.”

Indianapolis overall has hosted the Trials six times, most recently in 2000 at the IUPUI Natatorium, before it went to Long Beach in 2004 and then started a four-time run at CH Health Center Arena in Omaha, Nebraska, from 2008 through 2020. It was during July 2020 that the bid process for this summer first began as the pandemic was in full swing.

“We didn’t know where events were at the time,” Myer said. “It kind of gave us a sense of hope to be able to bid on something that could be new and groundbreaking and something that no one’s ever done before when we were in a time where the event space was pretty bleak. To be in sports and be in events and to be having that kind of sense of hope that maybe this could happen and we could do it, I think was a real bit of inspiration for our team.”

As the bid was being prepared, the idea of proposing the NFL stadium as the site was mentioned with, Myer and Gliot admit, some arched eyebrows in response. But “the general manager of Lucas Oil Stadium is a swimmer, Eric Neuberger, and when bringing up the idea to him, he said, ‘Let’s go for it,’” Myer said. “It’s been exciting, it’s a big undertaking and there were a lot of people that we had to consult before we really went all in, but people were inspired by what the possibilities could be.”

And it was that inspiration that captured USA Swimming’s attention.

“Indianapolis came in with a bid that was second to none,” Hinchey said. “And of course, the history we have there, the centennial history of the 1924 Trials and Games in Paris leads to what we’re doing this year. And then really the people of Indianapolis, the Indiana Sports Corp, are just phenomenal partners.”