The United States’ historic dominance of the Olympic swimming competitions makes the sport a central one for fans here and it made the US Olympic Swimming Team Trials as gargantuan as an NFL Draft event. The Trials, which took place from June 15 to 23, were held for the first time ever in an NFL stadium—Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indianapolis, home of the Colts football team—instead of at the CHI Health Center Omaha, the Nebraska arena where they had taken place ahead of four consecutive previous Olympics qualifying trials. The nine-day event was predicted to generate over $100 million of economic impact locally, according to the Indiana Sports Corp.
The stadium venue, which would be able to seat 30,000 after the construction of two Olympic-sized pools over the football field, more than twice the number the earlier arena could accommodate, presented significant live-sound challenges for the event, which was also broadcast on NBC Sports. Thankfully, a DiGiCo SD12-96...
