Olympic Splash for Local Pool Maker
The Hearald Tribune
BY STEVE JORDON
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Soon, 1,225 of the fastest swimmers in the United States will be pawing their way through a sleek new racing pool in Omaha, Nebraska, each trying to become one of the few, the proud and the 45 with a ticket to the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.
They will be holding this all-out battle for superiority in a sleek, turbulence-free stainless steel pool in Omaha's Qwest Center, with network TV cameras on hand to record every stroke. A swimming pool maker could not ask for a much better showcase, and that is exactly why Sarasota-based Myrtha Pools U.S.A. four years ago became a sponsor of U.S.A. Swimming. "There are only a few people in the world who can even do above-ground pools like we do," said Kevin McGrath, Myrtha's chief executive, on Wednesday. "It is a small part of our business, but it is a high-profile event." Myrtha also is building the pool that will host the water polo competition in Beijing starting Aug.10 at the Ying Tung Natatorium. Just to get the two Omaha pools built the competition pool and an even larger warm-up pool required a year of preparation, manufacturing and elaborate shipping logistics.
The parts were made for Myrtha in Beaver Falls, Wis., put into huge shipping containers, then moved by ship, rail and semitrailer to Omaha. Myrtha engineers drew up the pool and the specifications for the filtration equipment to go along with it.
The pools cost about $2 million each, but the deal is that U.S.A. Swimming gets to use of them for next to nothing. The Olympic swimming trials begin June 29 and run for eight days. NBC will be covering the event live: "Pretty phenomenal coverage for swimming," said Harold Cliff, chief executive officer of the organizing committee for the event, H2Omaha.Then, as the last screams of "U.S.A." are echoing within the Qwest Center, a team of Myrtha workers must take the pools apart in two days flat, after getting an assist from the Omaha fire department in draining each of one million gallons of water. Myrtha pools are made from modular components, which is why they could be used in a venue like the Qwest Center, where set-up time and takedown time are at a premium. "It took us about 14 days to put both of them in," said McGrath. "It is like a ballet. We had probably 20 people working on that at once." As soon as the event is concluded, the Myrtha team goes into reverse mode. "Starting at 7 o'clock at night, we start disassembling it," McGrath said. "We will work round the clock for two days and have it completely out of the Qwest center in two days. It is quite a feat." The team slides the pool parts back into their 10 40-foot- long shipping containers, to be reinstalled in a few months as permanent in-ground pools at the Poseidon Swim Foundation's new aquatics center in Chesterfield County, Va.
In competitive use for just a few years now, the Myrtha pools already have been the scenes of 29 world records. Because of the modular design, officials and swimmers alike can be certain they are timing a lap in a pool that is exactly 50 meters long. Just as importantly, the design of both the gutter system and the recirculation system are optimized to prevent turbulence. "We like to think it is fast," McGrath said. The speed of the pool coupled with the way the Olympic trails are set up almost insures that more records will be broken. "Nobody is automatically in," Cliff said. "At the trials, it is only the first- and second- place finishers who make the team. If you come in third you don't go anywhere except home. There are no free tickets to Beijing." "We would expect world records to fall in Omaha, in order just to make the team." Six swimmers who qualified to go to Omaha are members of the Sharks swim team. They train at a Myrtha pool installed at the Sarasota YMCA at Potter Park in south Sarasota.
