Inside the futuristic LA ‘Colosseum’ where Dolphins and USA will do battle in the pool

Los Angeles: Australian swimmer Lani Pallister and her coach, Dean Boxall , crane their necks to look at a 110-metre infinity screen – longer than a football field – that weighs about one million kilograms and hangs 37 metres above the ground.

The pair are standing inside SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, trying to comprehend how one of the world’s most technologically advanced sporting venues – usually reserved for NFL games and concerts featuring the likes of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran – will be transformed into the swimming arena for the 2028 Olympics.

More than 40,000 spectators, potentially including US President Donald Trump, will pack into one half of the futuristic arena for nine days of competition in what promises to be the grandest swimming spectacle in Olympic history.

The $7 billion venue opened in 2020 and has already hosted the 2022 Super Bowl and FIFA World Cup matches this year.

Sienna Toohey, at 17 the youngest member of the Australian team, grew up training at her local pool in Albury. The difference between the two venues could not have been more stark.

“The atmosphere will be insane and very US-sided,” Toohey said. “Honestly, it’s bigger than what I thought it was going to be.”

Fresh from their Commonwealth Games success in Glasgow and Pan Pacific Championships glory down the road in Irvine, the Australians were given an exclusive, all-access tour of the stadium on Monday (Tuesday AEST) before flying home.

“I just said to Dean, ‘It’s not super-overwhelming’,” Pallister said. “I thought it would be bigger and, ‘Oh my god, it’s in your face’.”

“It’s really big. It looks like the Colosseum in Rome the way they have structured it,” Boxall said.

“If Lani was swimming like her mother [Janelle] was back in the ’80s, she never would have this opportunity. Brisbane’s not going to be like this in 2032 … but this has to happen again. Swimming’s going to be front and centre as one of the global sports of 2028. It feels like a rock concert and you’re here to perform.”

Swimming legend Ian Thorpe was in attendance, along with Australian Olympic Committee officials including president Ian Chesterman, chief executive Mark Arbib and chef de mission Anna Meares.

“I’ve never walked out of a venue as awestruck as I was out of SoFi,” Meares said. “It is so impressive.”

The noise inside the stadium promises to be unlike anything swimming has experienced, but the Dolphins are aiming to silence the home crowd by winning gold medal after gold medal and, ultimately, beat the Americans on the medal tally. Boxall refers to it simply as the “heist”.

Sam Short, Meg Harris and Zac Stubblety-Cook were taken inside the locker room usually occupied by the Los Angeles Rams and given a tour of the facilities they will use when they race here in 2028.