Swimming
I had the pleasure of watching some of Canada's top swimmers and visiting the outstanding Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre for the first time! A wonderful experience!
An amazing facility & amazing to watch Canada’s best swimmers breaking records.
It was a great display of our young athletic swimmers. Enjoyed the whole thing.
Even though it is so much better than we have experienced throughout the Covid period, I would love to see swimming become more exciting. Looking at other countries and how they can hype a national meet, as well as the popularity of ISL, and NCAA, I think Canada should learn from those events and make it so that spectators do not want to miss the event. The fast swimming is already there, with many world records, national records, and age-group records. Now it is time to make the whole event the most exciting place to be with DJs, lights, a chicken mascot, and more!
We can’t believe that we saw Summer and the Team perform! And, witnessing world records was the memory of a lifetime! Our daughter volunteered as a helper and will never forget the experience! Bring in the worlds and the Olympics - Canada is unstoppable!!!
Came out to watch some fast swimming and Trials 2023 did not disappoint. Looking forward to this time next year to see what the Olympic team will shape up to be!
I can confirm previous Raves and Rants. The venue is spectacular brute airy with natural lighting. The swimming was amazing! The addition of club swimmers really added to the excitement as well! It’s was fun to compare where the up and coming swimmers from different countries measure up, and meeting their idols on deck and in the water is a dream come true. The staff was FANTASTIC! The host was fabulous! Swim Canada reps did superb! Now here’s the meat… Parking for this type of event is awful! The location of this facility in proximity to hotels/shopping/food vendors is one of the worst in the country and the added souvenir at the end of the trip is finding out that the highway (401) to get to the facility from the closest hotel is a TOLL highway FYI out of towners! The bonus is that the facility made pop up licensed cafes for the event on either side of the pool, however you PAY heavily just like at an NHL game. There is also a Booster Juice located on site and it is my new favourite in the country… the poor girl who was working solo those days did an AMAZING job! The seating is super cramped, as soon as you have wide swimmer shoulders or a slightly pudgy body you are in your seat neighbours bubble for sure! The sound system for this event, as someone previously commented, was spotty around the facility despite having excellent seats. The sound in the upper area is perfect, the sound closer down to the action was not as good depending on where you chose. Back to parking… I would suggest that the local law enforcement be hired to direct traffic leaving this event after finals to make it safer and smoother. Or another option could be to offer a park and ride shuttle with a nearby vacant property or school lot. This was most appropriate for finals. Many of the club competitors families had to UBER or taxi and that set up could have been much better planned to prevent the extra cab fares for sitting in a busy parking lot waiting to get out. I love the set up, the facility itself is gorgeous and perfectly designed (with exception of smaller seats and limited parking). Which bring me to the critical point of the lack of city planning for such a venue being blatantly evident for its size. This facility makes abundantly clear where the lack of priority is when developing a world class facility like this. Not having accessible accommodation is a fail, not having overflow parking OR alternative solutions for each of the seats in the facility is a fail. When swimmers/competitors/coaches/trainers/chaperones come from all over the world and country, you bet their families are most likely going to be there. I would be surprised if locals made up 25% of the tickets sold (I met only one local swim team) to this sold out venue. City planners - by not having foresight on these issues, you are creating a traffic nightmare because there is nothing accessible close by! You are forcing visitors to rent cars and add to congestion during big events. Cheers to the facility staff and managers who have to deal with the same frustrations from first time visitors! I hope city planners take advice from facility management more seriously… this is a nation wide issue.
Terrific competition. Terrific venue! Great volunteers! But the sound system in the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre is crap! Couldn’t understand the commentary or interviews with athletes. Really, really disappointing! Fix the sound system!!
We attended the Fina swimming World Cup in the Pan Am aquatic centre. We were sitting in section 201. The sound quality (from the speakers) was awful. We could not understanding anything that the speakers were saying. It was so muffled. I am surprised: this is supposed to be an International level facility.
Beautiful venue, happy people, graceful athletes. Enjoyed watching the swimmers warm up as much as the racing. Memorable! PF
