Olympic Trials

Tomorrow is reaching a goal, knocking one off the bucket list, in general a really exciting time for me. I'm off to Omaha and the Swimming Olympic Trials. Here's a photo of the first panel for the competition pool being set a few weeks ago.

To prepare I spent the morning with 6 - 10 year old swimmers at the Elks Country Club of Hamilton, OH. It was a fun meet. "Ah, the good ol' days of summer swimming."


I have no idea of the flow of each meet day in Omaha. I anticipate some down time during which I hope to work out (the Omaha YMCA's have been gracious to open their facilities to me after I contacted them), read and post on the blog. I'll try to post my position on deck each day on Twitter (jrakerlive) and here. As my children would recommend: "Look for the lights shining off his head!" Although in a perfect world, officials should not be seen on the Trials deck - at least not on TV.


We're all looking forward to seeing Lochte & Phelps square off but there will be many more fantastic races. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Missy Franklin does, the 16-year old phenom from Colorado. She's a great young lady.


All but the fastest heats of preliminaries will be webcast live at usaswimming.org June 25-July 1. The fastest 2-4 heats of preliminaries will be broadcast on tape delay by NBC Sports. See the schedule for further information. Olympic Trials TV Broadcast Schedule

Here are some links to the construction of the pools in Omaha:

Omaha News Report
2008 Time Lapse