Coach Tests Waters for Pool Buy
Daytona Beach News-Journal Online
By JIM HAUG
Staff Writer
PORT ORANGE -- Local swimmers want more than Olympic gold this summer. They want to bring home the swimming pool, too. If Steve Lochte has his way, the warm-up swimming pool used for the Olympic trials in Omaha will have its permanent homenext to the Port Orange YMCA.
"It would be nice to offer the community the same pool that Ryan made the Olympic team in," said Lochte, who is the father of Ryan Lochte, a gold medal winner in the 2004 Olympics, and the head coach for Daytona Swimming Inc. Lochte wants to raise $100,000 for a down payment by the end of February, which would reserve the pool once the trials for the Beijing Olympics are concluded. The pool is on sale for about $1 million, which is about $500,000 to $400,000 cheaper than the normal market price, said Mike Mintenko, a regional manager for Myrtha Pools USA. Mintenko said interest in buying the pool is intense with about 30 swimming clubs from across the United States making inquiries.
"I would like an offer sooner rather than later," Mintenko said. Myrtha builds swimming pools for special events, which can be later reassembled for a permanent owner after the competition. Florida State University, for example, purchased one of the swimming pools used in the 2005 world swimming championship in Montreal, Mintenko said.
Lochte said the Omaha sale is an opportunity to get two pools for the price of one because it's an L-shaped pool that can be split into an eight-lane, 50-meter-long Olympic pool and smaller, 25-meter-long pool with five lanes. Currently, competitive swimmers have to share outdoor YMCA pools where senior citizens do aerobics to 1950s rock music and kids splash in the shallow end. Daytona Beach Community College has an indoor pool but it's not an Olympic-sized pool and poor acoustics in the building make it difficult to communicate to swimmers, Lochte said. Lochte would eventually like to build a facility around the Olympic pool with a retractable roof so swimmers can use it even in colder weather. The Volusia County Beach Patrol, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office scuba team and local schools all could benefit with a new pool for training and swim classes, Lochte said. Because the Daytona Beach area could use the pool to host regional and even world swimming competitions, the economic impact would be enormous, Lochte said. He knows there is potential because the area has already missed out on opportunities. When Daytona Beach hosted a world lifeguard competition in 2002, for example, it lost the indoor races to Orlando because it didn't have the facilities, Lochte said. "Why not keep all that money here?" he said. Despite local challenges, Lochte anticipates that seven swimmers from the Daytona Beach area will qualify for the trials for the United States' Olympic team. A new pool would make up for an anomaly.
