The New Price Of Swimming - The $4.5 million pool

As a swimmer I gotta admit it's always fun to swim at a different pool and even better to swim at a brand spanking new pool.  Over my lifetime I've been lucky to swim at some great amazing pools and some of the nastiest pools in the US of A.  But what makes a great pool?  Oh let's just say about $4.5 million.  Gulliver Preparatory in Florida has a brand new "state-of-the-art $4.5 million pool":

The school boasts a new 50-meter Olympic size pool with 10 lanes and seats 300 spectators. It also has a second-floor viewing platform, two locker rooms (one for the home team, the other for, sniff, the other side,) a workout and training room and coaches' offices.

The Gulliver Schools Aquatic Center's new pool, designed by Miami-based Gili-McGraw Architects, meets international standards with a depth of nine feet in the middle and just under seven feet at the edges. The deeper the pool, the faster it is for competition.

And the Gulliver Aquatic Center sports Omega starting blocks -- an adjustable slanted backstop for track starts and are wired to detect false starts on relays.

Only one other U.S. facility -- in Washington -- has them. They were bought the Omega blocks for a USA Swimming Nationals meet in Washington. The blocks debuted last year at the World Championships in Rome but arrived too late to win approval from FINA for use during last summer's Olympic Games. - miami  herald

I'm jealous!  I recently had commented that I thought that the building of high end swimming pools in America was history.  That for Olympic Trails and the big for Chicago included temporary pools. But then this school gets this new pool.  Maybe there is hope.  Well for private schools.  Public schools and universities are under such budge constraints they are lucky if the pools have water in them.  Oh well at least someone has a new pool.

(photo fro http://www.gulliverschools.org/)