The dates for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials were approved in a meeting off the Board of Directors on Tuesday. The event will be hosted in Omaha, Nebraska from June 21-28, 2020. That means that, even with the inclusion of 2 new events (the women’s 1500 and men’s 800; the mixed medley isn’t held at the Olympic Trials), USA Swimming will keep the trials meet at 8 days.
That means at least a 3-day overlap in the city with the NCAA’s Division I baseball College World Series, which runs from June 12th through June 23rd or 24th (depending on how the bracket plays out). In 2016, the championship game was rain-delayed, and ticket-holders to the swimming trials received free admission to watch the game.
The pool swimming events at the 2020 Olympic Games will run from July 25th through August 2nd in Tokyo. That means a 27-day gap from the end of the American trial to the start of competition at the Olympics. That’s shorter than the gap between events in 2016, but about the same as the gap between events in 2012.
2008-2020 Trials vs. Olympics
| Year | Trials End Date | Olympics Start Date (Swimming) | Gap | Trials Host | Olympics Host | Distance Between Hosts | Time Zones Between Hosts |
| 2020 | June 28th | July 25th | 27 days | Omaha | Tokyo | 6060 miles | 14 hours |
| 2016 | July 3rd | August 6th | 34 days | Omaha | Rio | 5573 miles | 2 hours |
| 2012 | July 2nd | July 28th | 26 days | Omaha | London | 4269 miles | 6 hours |
| 2008 | July 6th | August 9th | 34 days | Omaha | Beijing | 6,472.73 miles | 13 hours |
2020 will be the 4th-straight occasion where the event is hosted at the 18,000-seat CHI Health Center in Omaha. Omaha was announced as host in May of 2017. Time standards for the 2020 Olympic Trials will be announced via a live webcast this Thursday – after the summer’s championship meets, which is later than they’ve traditionally been released.
So is the rest of the country.
Michael phelps will win this years olympics
No announcement yet. In 2015, they went on sale on June 29th, about a year out. I think that’s usually when hotels open up too, so that’s probably not a coincidence (they want people to be able to book hotels and tickets together, and not wind up with one or the other). I would guess about a year before the start. June 28th is when they start this year…
Would be great to see it in Austin, San Francisco, Charlotte, Phoenix or Atlanta in their basketball arenas
San Francisco, Charlotte, Phoenix, and Atlanta are all out of consideration because of the NBA schedule (assuming that by San Francisco, you mean Oakland, where the Warriors play).
Austin? In the Erwin Center? I guess so…I think the only place to put a pool there would be to use Jamail as the warmup/warmdown. Seems like an awfully long walk to me, but maybe there’s a better solution logistically.
Having been to Omaha for a couple of sessions in 2016, I thought it was a good venue and look forward to going back in ’20. That said, if we’re offering ideas for other places, I think St. Paul and Xcel Energy Center would also work well. It’s connected to the convention center, so the warm up pool set up could be the same as the Omaha set up. The Twin Cities is also very centrally located and MSP (a Delta hub) is an easy place to fly to from anywhere in the country.
I suppose the issue with the X is that the NHL season theoretically can also push into almost mid-June, which would limit pool construction time.
There’s no current NHL or NBA arena that will ever host this meet until the timing of the meet dramatically changes. If we’re going to open it up to NHL and NBA arenas, then there’s DOZENS of near-perfect choices. But, there’s no hypothetical, again without either the dates of the NBA/NHL season or the Olympic Trials changing, that allows any of these arenas to contract USA Swimming to start building a pool before the maximum possible conclusion of the NHL or NBA season, which as it sits is about June 15th for the NHL and June 19th for the NBA. That’s way, way too close to motivate USA Swimming to leave Omaha.
There are a few other arenas around that… Read more »
Hard to disagree with any of that – you’re too damn practical. 😉
In any case, I like Omaha and had fun at OTs in ’16. We even went out twice that summer, as my kids swam in the OT pool for the Omaha Cup a couple of weeks prior to OTs. We stayed in a family budget hotel about 5 miles from downtown, which was just fine and not unreasonable price-wise.
I know, right? Maybe they could just set up the pool ahead of time, freeze it, and then just thaw it once hockey is over. I can’t believe that I didn’t think of that sooner.
wouldn’t this be a couple of weeks after the NBA finals are over?
2020 NBA schedule hasn’t been released yet, but the last 7 game finals series (2016…) ran until June 19th.
Between setting up the pool, testing the pool, setting up signage, setting up the convention space, and holding a test event, they would need at least a month lead time I would think even if they really compressed things. They first filled the pool on June 6th in 2016. I think there’s going to have to be a really compelling reason beyond just “we’re bored with Omaha” for the Trials to move. This is coming from someone who wrote an editorial that “I’m bored with Omaha,” but aside from the CWS conflict, everything else about the setup fits incredibly-well for the… Read more »
I don’t see the Charlotte Hornets or the Phoenix Suns making an NBA finals anytime soon.
Central location…small town with a big city feel…welcoming hosts…great facility…hard to beat – can you name another option?
San Antonio… cheaper to get to, to stay, etc. Omaha jacks up prices so a family has to spend over 2 grand to go watch their kid swim- and that’s on the cheap end
Dean Farris’s house! His mom has a freezer full of frozen yogurt and they can run multiple garden hoses for drinking water.
Well said, Joe Bagodonuts- Dean Farris’s mum for President!
There isn’t a mess ..the traffic control is excellent..San Antonio would be toasty in late June
“Jerry World” enough said.
Only 642 days until Olympic Trials.
Going there is probably because of a great financial situation that the swimming membership has no knowledge of what it is specifically. Just calculate roughly plenty to go around. Like how are Nattional sites awarded?
Would have been better if they did it around 34 days like the other past couple Olympics. Give those athletes more time to double taper and adjust to the host city time change and event times.
Except any earlier and they really collide with the baseball tournament. By the time the trials start, baseball is down to the last few teams. No way there are enough hotel rooms earlier when 8 teams are still playing. It’s a good reason to look at other host cities, as good as Omaha has been.
All the more reason to move it to a state that supports men’s collegiate swimming
Meh. It always seems to work out. One more day than for London, and that turned out fine.