The Summer Olympics are being held in France this year, but Indiana has had a role to play, and Columbus has a connection, too. The trials for the U.S. Olympic swim team were held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, June 15-23, and members of the Club Olympia swim organization were among the 285,000-plus spectators who were there to take in the action. Some 1,007 swimmers competed, and the 46 who qualified to play are headed to Paris.

The Olympic swim trials were held at the IU Natatorium until 2000, and that year one of the competitors was a 15-year-old Michael Phelps, the Natatorium sold out and USA Swimming decided to start using temporary pools. The trials were held at the Chi Health Center Omaha Arena and Convention Center until 2021, when they outgrew that venue, as well.

The trials were in Indianapolis to take advantage of the Colts’ venue, but converting a football field to a swimming arena was no small feat. It took three years of planning and collaboration between more than a dozen firms and entities to make it happen.

When it came to the actual building, workers spent four weeks – 8,000 person-hours — constructing the two 50-meter competition pools and a 25-meter warmup pool. They first took up the turf and goalposts before laying down plywood, building the pool walls and installing a thick liner of synthetic rubber at the bottom.

The 1.8 million gallons of water needed for the pools were sourced from the White River, after being cleaned of impurities and treated for competition. This required 100-horsepower pumps to move more than 8,500 gallons per minute. Then when the trials were over, the water was again cleaned of impurities and sent back to the White River. To further this model of sustainability, the materials used for the project were not wasted. When the pools were dismantled after the trials, the competition pool went to a new home in Fort Wayne and the practice pools to the Cayman Islands. The stadium was left as they found it, ready for the next football season.

Finishing the pools, however, was not the end of the job. Yet to be constructed were 480 LED boards to create the center-hung scoreboard, which was 20 times the size of the one used in the last trials. Builders also created a 70-foot vertical digital board for athlete entrances and hung four high-speed cameras to film the finishes at 100 frames per second four stories high above the pool.

“USA Swimming challenged Indianapolis to not only take the trials to the next level, but to grow the sport of swimming through the trials, and we believe we’ve done just that,” said Sarah Myer, the chief marketing officer for the Indiana Sports Corporation, who worked with the other partners to put on the trials. “The athletes experienced a community that has embraced their sport – from the airport to the downtown amenities to the fan fests and the 66-foot Eiffel Tower replica built for the occasion to the incredible venue that is Lucas Oil Stadium the fan base of swimming has grown, and we are training people to be swim and water safe as a legacy project through the trials.”

Which brings us back to those Club Olympia members who went with their parents or in groups one or two times or every day to watch the trials and take advantage of other activities that were planned around them. Twelve-year-old twin sisters Rebeca and Camila Mejia Murguia attended the Amazing Awaits swim camp in Center Grove that was led by three-time Olympian Josh Davis. They took part in a Central Zone Multicultural Meet and then walked into the stadium alongside Davis as Team Indiana.

“That was like, ‘Whoa!’” Camila said. “It was ginormous. It was cool to see. The swimmers who made it there was a great experience.”

The girls said that as small children they were afraid of the water, so their parents put them into swimming lessons for their own safety.

“It is also good exercise,” Rebeca said. “And they wanted us to do it because you need to try something to see if you like it and if it’s something you want to do, and swimming was just something we wanted to do.”

Camila said seeing the trials left her feeling enthusiastic.

“Everyone worked really hard to get to that point,” she said. “It makes you feel motivated to meet your goals. You can do anything you want if you work hard.”

Rebecca said one of the things she learned at the trials was how emotional the sport is.

“Seeing a person finish their race and get all emotional was inspirational,” she said. “To think that maybe one day you can get to that point. It’s a physically hard sport, but it’s very emotional, too.”

She commented that swimming is a team sport where teammates support one another, and Camila added that family, friends and coaches all come together to help out, so it isn’t really an individual sport at all.

In fact, the girls’ mother, Erika, and several other Columbus parents were also involved in the trials. The Indiana Sports Corp. reached out to clubs around the state to find volunteers to help in the athletes’ lounges and dining facilities, and they responded.

“These are spaces where athletes have their most intimate moments as they prepare to be called into competition,” Erika said. “Parents know the sport, and they respect the athletes. On the last day there was a large group of parents from Club Olympia who helped in the athletes’ lounge.”

The result of their efforts was that the Columbus group was named Club of the Day on the last day of the event.

The club’s coach, Jennifer Brinegar, a former Olympic swimmer, and the mother of Olympian Michael Brinegar, started Club Olympia in 2016, when the Donner pool was going through a transition and parents didn’t think their children were getting the instruction they needed. She named the club after one of the same names she was involved with in Fort Wayne. The coach there was Olympic coach Stefan Hunyadfi, whom she said she both admired and feared. She wanted to honor him and Columbus East High School, whose facilities they were using.

Swimmers in the group range in age from 8 to 16, and they have had as many as 75 members, although this summer they are holding at between 55 and 60.

“We don’t recruit or advertise,” Brinegar said, “but we do put our results in the paper. I didn’t start the club to make sure it went on forever. I just wanted to help the kids get what they needed.”

The club is training at the Donner pool again, and Brinegar says the coaching staff is great and relations are good between the Donner Swim Club and their own. She said, “Sooner rather than later” they will combine their clubs back into one since Columbus doesn’t really need two clubs.

But for right now she is pleased with what her group got to do in Indianapolis.

“It was such a good experience,” she said. “There were so many different things swimmers could do to experience the trials in addition to watching them. It was a great time.”

The best part, of course, was seeing swimmers who had trained so hard get the moment to prove themselves.

“The swimmers really came through and broke some records and had some fast swims,” she said. “I think the United States is set up to do really well in Paris.”