“Where’s the swim event this year?” asked John Young. Sevan followed up with, “Swim event this year, Dave?”
With a big grin on his face, Dave Castro responded by saying, “Next question.”
If you were watching the North America East Event 2 Recap Show with Dave Castro on The Sevan Podcast this weekend, the discussion turned to the 2024 CrossFit Games and the new location in Fort Worth, Texas. After talking about Andrew Hiller, John Young asks the question about where the swim event will be this year. Of course Castro did not answer, but it left me wondering…where could CrossFit host a swim event in Fort Worth.
So I started searching for Olympic-sized swimming pools near Dickies Arena. The first path I went down was looking at nearby universities as the last swim event in Madison was at the University of Wisconsin’s swimming facility.
That led me to TCU, or Texas Christian University. It’s close, just 2.5 miles away from Dickies Arena and it has a swimming facility. The University Recreation Center is on campus and is used by the TCU Swim team. It is not an Olympic-sized pool as it is only 25 years and features just six swimming lanes, but it does have a viewing area that can seat over 1,000 fans.
But while reading about the University Recreation Center, the bottom of the page mentions that the swim team also has access to an eight-lane, 50-meter pool that is outside. The Forest Park Pool is just one mile from campus and is used by the swim team to train outside and “take advantage of the Texas heat”.
Forest Park Pool is a public swimming pool owned by the city of Fort Worth. It also just underwent an $15 million renovation this past year that included an update to the Olympic-sized lap pool. The renovations were just completed and a ribbon cutting ceremony was held on Memorial Day weekend to mark the re-opening of the pool.
The outdoor pool doesn’t have any built-in bleachers, but it is outside and adjacent to the Fort Worth Zoo which then connects to the Trinity Trails System which runs along the Clear Fork Trinity River that is close to Dickies Arena.
After doing some additional searching, Forest Park Pool definitely seems to be best location for the CrossFit Games to host a swimming event. It’s outside (and we know 5% of the events will be outside), it has eight lanes, it’s near Dickies Arena and it’s owned by the city of Fort Worth.
The last point might be the most important. We know that the city officials really wanted to bring the CrossFit Games to Ft. Worth and have essentially given them the use of Dickies Arena for free. It would make sense (to me) that a newly renovated public pool would be offered up to CrossFit for a swim event.
HISTORY OF THE SWIM AT THE GAMES
A swim event was first programmed at the CrossFit Games in 2011. Since that year, a swim event has been in the Games every year except for the 2023 CrossFit Games. Most of the swim events have been outside of a pool, either in the Pacific Ocean or in Lake Monona. The exceptions were in 2013, 2020 and 2022 where it was held in a swimming pool.
In 2013, The Pool was on Wednesday morning and featured 10 rounds of Swim 25 meters, 3 BMU, Swim 25 meters. In 2020, the swim was on the final day and was 4 rounds of 15/10 air bike calories, 50-meter swim, 10 GHDS and 10 ball slams on a 4-minute interval clock. And in 2022, it was Rinse N’ Repeat with a 50-yard swim and an ascending calorie SkiErg every two minutes.
So unless Castro and Adrian Bozman don’t plan on testing athletes’ ability in the water, history would dictate that a swim event will be programmed this year. And with the focus on testing water quality of a lake or river, it seems unlikely that CrossFit would go that route. Thus, in my opinion a lap pool seems to be the most likely scenario. And with that, the Forest Park Pool appears to be the frontrunner to host such an event.
