Long Beach Wins Bid for 2004 Water Polo Olympic Trials
The summer of 2004 will be a busy one for downtown Long Beach. After having already secured the Janet Evans Invitational Swim Meet and the USA Olympic Swimming Trials at an elaborately dressed temporary venue near the Long Beach Convention Center, the city can now add the USA Water Polo Olympic Trials to its roster of events.
USA Water Polo, the sports governing organization, awarded the trials to Long Beach during its annual convention in Addison, Texas last weekend. The Los Angeles Sports Council and the Long Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau partnered on the successful bid. With the water polo trials on board, Long Beach will now be the home of five straight weeks of elite aquatic competition between June and July 2004.
Plans are in place to construct a temporary venue in the shadow of the Convention Center, less than 500 feet from the Pacific Ocean. The venue will be able to accommodate some of the biggest crowds for water polo in the U.S., with a seating capacity of approximately 10,000. The site will also be a short walk away from Long Beach’s Shoreline Village and Pine Avenue, two of the city’s hottest spots for consumers and sightseers.
The USWP Trials have traditionally attracted the best teams in the world to compete in an Olympic tune-up. In July of 2000, the entire women’s Olympic field participated in the Holiday Cup in Los Alamitos, Calif., while five of the six teams participating in the men’s tournament also competed in Sydney.
‘This is a great thing for USA Water Polo,’ said USWP Executive Director Bruce Wigo. ‘The Olympic Trials will feature some of the world’s best teams, athletes and coaches and this promises to be an exciting, well-organized, well-executed event.’
Long Beach has previously hosted elite international amateur competition. For the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Long Beach was chosen to host four events, including archery, volleyball, yachting and fencing.
‘The city is ecstatic to be hosting both pre-Olympic events for both swimming and water polo,’ said Todd Trinneer, Long Beach CVB spokesman. ‘We’ve had outstanding support from the mayor and city manager. It’s a big deal. This will be five weeks of intense, elite competition where Southern Californians can come and witness some of the best aquatic athletes in the world competing. Not everyone can go to Athens.’
U.S. women’s national team head coach Guy Baker, a Long Beach resident, is also enthusiastic about the idea…and not just because he’ll be saving on gas.
‘This will be very exciting,’ he said. ‘I think that with proper marketing and promoting, that we could have huge crowds there. Our women’s team won the silver medal in Sydney, so there will already be considerable interest to begin with. So we’ll be hoping for lots of fans and some really good teams.’
The Los Angeles Sports Council is a private, nonprofit organization whose purpose is to bid for and host major sporting events in the Greater Los Angeles area.
For further information please contact:
Mark Meyers
L.A. Sports Council
T: +1 (213) 482-6333 or (714) 734-0433
Todd Trinneer
Long Beach Area CVB
T +1 (562) 436-3645 ext. 134