Omaha lands Olympic swim trials

ItsAllAboutMe · Post by **ItsAllAboutMe** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:53 pm

It's not on WH site yet but it is in the evening addition. This is a huge get for Omaha and the Qwest center. NOt to mention the Hilton Hotel.

It helped that Mutual of Omaha already was the sponsor of the USA swin team

almighty_tuna · Post by **almighty_tuna** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:54 pm

Yahtzee!! I remember when we were in the running with a couple other cities for this event. Great win!!

Big E · Post by **Big E** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:06 pm

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=38&u_sid=1447449

Asten · Post by **Asten** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:31 pm

ItsAllAboutMe wrote:It's not on WH site yet but it is in the evening addition. This is a huge get for Omaha and the Qwest center. NOt to mention the Hilton Hotel.

It helped that Mutual of Omaha already was the sponsor of the USA swin team

I am almost choked up here reading this. I'm always elated by the laurels heaped upon Omaha once people see it. I am not very familiar with San Antonio's size, committment, etc, but winning out over Minneapolis is a big deal.

I have to wonder if they had anyone in town for the CWS to see what this burg has to offer to weeklong elite sporting events?

nebraska dreamin' · Post by **nebraska dreamin'** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:31 pm

The Omaha Sports Commision Website has some great renderings of what the event could look like.

I really like the Ist National Tower pic.

http://www.omahasports.org/news050628-media.shtml

Minneapolis Boy · Post by **Minneapolis Boy** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:41 pm

AWESOME!

omahahawk · Post by **omahahawk** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:43 pm

Sweet...I swear, seems like this site and Omaha seem to keep feeding off each other in an ever increasing positive momentum!

jjjjhskr · Post by **jjjjhskr** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:54 pm

And here's my favorite quote "People are going to be blown away by Omaha.”

nebraska dreamin' wrote:The Omaha Sports Commision Website has some great renderings of what the event could look like.

I really like the Ist National Tower pic. It deserve a second post.

http://www.omahasports.org/news050628-media.shtml

Nice to see the olympic rings on the First National tower - I hope that's exactly what they do.

CountOfMC · Post by **CountOfMC** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 6:09 pm

Hopefully the ped. bridge will be up and running by then?!! The snowball is building fella's....

Minneapolis Boy · Post by **Minneapolis Boy** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 6:49 pm

Yes it is! It's also exciting to thing about having a number of cranes filling the skyline during that time!

OmahaChef · Post by **OmahaChef** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 7:16 pm

I too, got a bit misty-eyed reading this one. This is so huge for Omaha! 10,000 hotel romms occupied, and the national media focused on Michael Phelps....this is gonna be incredible!!

Linkin5 · Post by **Linkin5** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 7:21 pm

HOLY |expletive|! NICE

j4nu · Post by **j4nu** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 8:37 pm

Imagine that at least one of riverfront place towers will be done and the other may be done or under construction, a new tower may be on the rise at the old UP site, the mall may be at least partially rennovated, North Downtown will be well underway and we may even have more projects we haven't even dreamed of. This will make for a great vision of Omaha when these Athletes and the media arrive.

DTO Luv · Post by **DTO Luv** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:51 pm

Mind fart. This was also in the newspaper at work (for Mutual) last month. I think I had said something about it then but I'm glad it's official now. And a reminder it's only the OWH site we can't show the article for so unless it says differant (from any site or Jeff) can we please go back to showing articles. This computers stupid filter won't let me click on any links outside of the site.

eomaha · Post by **eomaha** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 10:39 pm

Mutual of Omaha has been an official sponsor of USA Swimming for some time now. I have no doubt they were instrumental in bringing this event to Omaha.

DTO Luv · Post by **DTO Luv** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 11:09 pm

I'm sure it will be all over the Noon News (Mutual paper) tommorow.

Finn · Post by **Finn** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 11:46 pm

Wow, this will be a great few months (2008) in Omaha - NCAA, CWS, Olympic Trials!

Post by **Omaha Cowboy** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 5:26 am

One word:

AWESOME!..

Omaha is on a ROLL

..

..Ciao..LiO....Peace

jjjjhskr · Post by **jjjjhskr** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 7:57 am

CountOfMC wrote:Hopefully the ped. bridge will be up and running by then?!! The snowball is building fella's....

That would be a perfect exclamation point to show off the city for this event.

O!

StreetsOfOmaha · Post by **StreetsOfOmaha** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 1:50 pm

Wow. This is absolutely fantastic for Omaha. 2008 will be an amazing year.

And, as the article in the OWH quoted today, this is not just putting Omaha on the national scene, but the international scene.

Fabulous!!!

And I love all the renderings by the Omaha Sports Comission. I, too, hope they do exactly that!

jjjjhskr · Post by **jjjjhskr** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 5:13 pm

Guys if you have the time (it takes very few seconds) vote on the USA Swimming website - "Are you looking forward to Omaha, Nebraska hosting the 2008 Olympics Trials?"

http://www.usaswimming.org/usasweb/DesktopDefault.aspx

omahahawk · Post by **omahahawk** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 5:26 pm

Yeah, looks like the vote is pretty evenly split right now. Maybe one of you guys could write a program to continually vote and skew the results - lol.

psl25201 · Post by **psl25201** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 5:27 pm

Well, I am sure most of you have read about it already, but I thought it would be good to have put up here for discussion. My father was out with Mayor Fahey at a Nebraska State Bank golf outing and Mike had actually informed my father there about it. My dad said he was glowing.

I gotta say something about our civic leaders and the influential people here in Omaha. There are quite a few of our city leaders that have incredible influence when it comes to this city and the different events. Mayor Fahey was telling my dad that we would all be suprised by the amount of influence that men like Walter Scott and Dave Sokol have on the different events going on around Omaha.

He also said that they are looking for a donor to pony up the money for the ball park. Right now, absolutely no tax dollars are going to be used. They want a Walter Scott, or someone with the money like Howard Hawks, who essentially built Hawks field in Lincoln, to really be the drive of a ball park or something therein. And you can betcha, they would love to get the ball rolling on something like that before the Olympic Trials come to town. Omaha might be a small town in comparison to the big cities that get these kind of events, but the people in this town are certainly among the most influential and really give Omaha a lot of credibility on a national stage.

Dark Eyes · Post by **Dark Eyes** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 7:00 pm

This will be great for the hotel and restaurant owners, and the city will have some extra tax revenue to spend.

Forgive me for not crying tears of joy over an event that I probably have very little chance of attending. Will ordinary Omahans have much of a chance to get decent seats at face value?

For the NCAA basketball tourney games, seats are set aside for the eight schools, more seats are blocked out for the media, and still more seats are reserved for NCAA officials and local bigwigs. So a sizable chunk of the arena seating is already spoken for by the time tickets go on sale to the general public. I can see something similar happening with the swim trials. As the U2 and Paul McCartney concerts illustrated, it's very difficult for the general public to get face-value tickets for a big event at Qwest Center. But they can always pay out the wazoo to Ticket Express or scalpers I guess.

Post by **Brad** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 8:40 pm

14,000!

DTO Luv · Post by **DTO Luv** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 10:52 pm

That's crazy in that article that Omaha (btwn the CWS, NCAA, USASimming) will have hosted around 400,000 people! That's a little under half of our metro and will be on tv for a month. heck yeah. I meant to bring the Mutual Paper home and put up what they wrote but I left it on my desk. Tomorrow though.

MTO · Post by **MTO** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 12:25 am

I want to go just to see Amanda Beard’s smile,

oh and her body.

OmahaDevelopmentMan · Post by **OmahaDevelopmentMan** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 9:43 am

I wonder if the expansion will be done in time for this. Any ideas?

Asten · Post by **Asten** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 10:30 am

OmahaDevelopmentMan wrote:I wonder if the expansion will be done in time for this. Any ideas?

The articles infer that they expect the expansion to be done prior to this. I'm sure they'd want it done before the NCAA tourney in March.

Post by **Omaha Cowboy** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:15 am

OmahaDevelopmentMan wrote:I wonder if the expansion will be done in time for this. Any ideas?

From the W-H story on Qwest Center expansion from June 9th 2005:

'The timeline for the project calls for bids to be awarded early next year, with construction to start by May 2006 and work to be substantially completed by September 2006.'..

Qwest Center seat expansion should be complete nearly 2 years prior to the 2008 Olympic swimming trials..

..Ciao..LiO....Peace

DTO Luv · Post by **DTO Luv** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 5:33 pm

The pic in the sports section today didn't look right. It showed the Qwest Center with a pool but the end of the arena looked glued in.

Will · Post by **Will** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 7:55 pm

This is possible because of former mayor Hal Daub
Was there any guesses as to how many people would be comming to Omaha for the trials? I just wonder if we have enough hotels (and maybe the hilton might want to try to expand before this comes, or any other hotels might be built like maybe around 20+ stories).

Harpoon · Post by **Harpoon** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 10:25 pm

I don't think you can give Daub sole credit for this one. Fahey is doing a great job continuing the momentum of development downtown, and the Chamber of Commerce is also doing a great job in selling Omaha. I think the Qwest is doing an excellent job on sporting events and concerts, but I just wish that more convention planners will start to notice Omaha and see what we have to offer. Most people from out of town only know about the zoo or the Old Market and think we still have cows roaming the streets.

omahahawk · Post by **omahahawk** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:06 pm

Interesting to see how Omaha already seems to be taking an active role in Olympic style swimming. Right now on NBC I'm seeing that Mutual of Omaha is sponsoring a large international swimming event in Sydney Australia as a run up event to the Omaha Olympic trials and the eventual Olympic games. Pretty cool.

DTO Luv · Post by **DTO Luv** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:54 pm

Mutual has been a big sponsor of US swimming for years. There one of the reasons we got the Olympic Swim Trials.

omahahawk · Post by **omahahawk** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 4:04 pm

I think I remember reading now that they were the main influence behind the 08 trials being here. It would be nice if we could score some more stuff like that.

UNOstudent · Post by **UNOstudent** » Wed May 23, 2007 12:32 am

fyi, tickets go on sale thursday 10am at ticketmaster. 15 session pass starts at $275

Linkin5 · Post by **Linkin5** » Wed May 23, 2007 9:59 am

Oh I will be there![/b]

OmahaJaysCU · Post by **OmahaJaysCU** » Wed May 23, 2007 3:07 pm

UNOstudent wrote:fyi, tickets go on sale thursday 10am at ticketmaster. 15 session pass starts at $275

Gosh, I sure hope all those damn Creighton season ticket holders get first dibs...

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