Ski Towns | AN OLYMPIC COMEBACK

Lake Placid’s Olympic Comeback

With the World University Games coming to Lake Placid in January, New York State has invested more than $500 million to upgrade its Olympic facilities and plans to welcome more than 100,000 visitors to the town. By Lisa Lynn

About two hours west of Middlebury, Vt. Lake Placid has been buzzing. Not since the 1980 Olympics has this Adirondack mountain town of just over 2,000 people seen so much action.

In late October, the main road was getting a new coat of asphalt and big blocks of granite were being laid for new sidewalks. Also on Main Street, the classy Grand Adirondack Hotel opened its doors in August with stylish rooms, original artwork by fly-fisherman and artist James Prosek and a cozy bar and solarium. All fall, hotel manager and former owner Garrick Smith was busy overseeing work on a new rooftop deck and bar with breathtaking views of Mirror Lake and Adirondack Mountains, as well as finishing up the downstairs restaurant.

Down the road, the Olympic Center was completing a mind-boggling $107 million dollar renovation. That included revamping the rink where the U.S. men’s hockey team had its “Miracle on Ice” upset at the 1980 Olympic Games, beating the Soviet favorites for the gold medal. The Center was also sprucing up the 1932 Olympic ice rink, a smaller practice rink and the outdoor speed skating oval where American Eric Heiden won five gold medals in 1980.

From the new Mount Van Hoevenberg base lodge you can look uphill at the sliding tracks or down at the cross-country and biathlon courses.

PHOTO COURTESY ORDA

Also new: a second-floor restaurant with views across the speed skating oval and an expanded Olympic Museum. But, as Olympic Center general manager Chadd Cassidy explained, “Perhaps the biggest costs are in the things you don’t see, like using the trapped heat from the ice rinks’ refrigeration system to heat the outdoor walkways so snow doesn’t build up.”

“In fact, every new building project has been executed with an eye toward sustainability,” noted Jaime Collins, the communications director for the Olympic Regional Development Authority which manages the legacy facilities. Examples range from the electric Zambonis used on the ice rinks to Gore Mountain’s 14,850-panel solar array, the largest dedicated ski area solar array in the U.S.

At Whiteface Mountain, 160 new low-energy, highefficiency HKD snow guns were blasting snow across newly-widened race trails such as Draper’s Drop.

At Mt. Van Hoevenberg, site of the Nordic skiing, biathlon, ski jumping and sliding (bobsled, luge, skeleton) facilities, a brand new 55,000-square-foot Mountain Pass lodge, completed in late 2020, has been swarming with young athletes. Inside, kids were scrambling up a two-story climbing wall. On one side of the building, a bar looks out

at an iced indoor push track, to be used by bobsled and skeleton racers. On the other side of the building, a lounge area worthy of an upscale hotel looks out over a 30-row biathlon shooting range and a paved 2.5K Nordic track, designed for summer training on roller skis.

Around the center, enhanced snowmaking has made Mt. Van Hoevenberg’s World Championship-rated 5 km loop one of the earliest cross-country ski trails to open and the last to close each season. Add to that a new lodge at the base of the ski jumps and the freestyle practice facilities and there’s another $80 million in investment.

All told, the state of New York has invested more than $500 million in upgrading the aging Lake Placid Olympic facilities and town infrastructure.

Why? As hotelier Smith, whose family has been in Lake Placid for generations, explained over a beer; “A lot of these facilities were built quickly for the 1980 Games and never meant to last more than six months. We were at a point where we had to upgrade or lose them. Getting the World

“We’ve hosted a lot of different national championships and World Cups for various sports but this January will be the first time since 1980 that all those sports will be happening at once in this small town,” says Tim Burke, US Biathalon coach and former University Games competitor.

With extensive snowmaking on a 5K loop, Mt. Van Hoevenberg has a World Cup-ready cross-country course (top). The Olympic center revamped four indoor rinks and the outdoor speed skating oval is open to the public when events are not going on. COURTESY ORDA

Whiteface Mountain boasts the biggest vertical drop in the Northeast (3,430 feet) and one of the two longest trails in the country. It will host the slalom and giant slalom events at the World University Games in January. COURTESY ORDA

“Whiteface is an unbelievable training ground for ski racers,” says former Olympian Tommy Biesemeyer, a UVM grad who now coaches at Northwood School in Lake Placid.

University Games gave us the impetus to look ahead and think about building for the next century.” For Smith, that meant first buying and then renovating the building on Main Street that is now the Grand Adirondack hotel.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Scheduled for Jan. 12-22, 2023, the 31st World University Games are open to invited athletes ages 17 to 25 in 12 Olympic sports.

“The University Games feel like an Olympics in that all these athletes from different winter sports are competing at the same time,” said Tim Burke, a former World University Games competitor, as he gave a tour of the Mt. Van Hoevenberg facility. Burke, who grew up just outside of Lake Placid, was the first American to ever take the lead in the Biathlon World Cup. He now coaches the U.S. Biathlon Team. “We’ve hosted a lot of different national championships and World Cups here for various sports but this January will be the first time since 1980 that all those sports will be happening at once, in one small town,” he said.

Put on by the International University Sports Federation (FISU), the World University Games have not been held in the United States since Buffalo, N.Y. hosted the Summer 1993 Universiade (as the University Games are also called). Lake Placid also hosted the winter version back in 1972.

The FISU Games typically take place in a different city every two years, though the 2021 Games, scheduled to be held in Lucerne, Switzerland, were canceled due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

For 11 days in January, Lake Placid will be home to nearly 1,500 athletes representing 50 countries, as well as another 1,000 or so coaches, trainers, officials and other

COURTESY ORDA

At the new Mt. Van Hoevenberg base lodge, you can watch the action at the indoor push track through giant windows in the adjacent bar and lounge area. delegates. There will be opening and closing ceremonies, podiums, flags flying from each country represented and much of the pomp and circumstance that goes with an Olympics, albeit on a smaller scale.

The town of Lake Placid will host cross-country skiing, biathlon, Nordic combined, ski jumping, figure skating, speed skating and short track speed skating and curling— as well as the semi-finals and finals for ice hockey.

The alpine ski racing events (alpine combined, slalom, GS, super G and mixed team parallel) will be held at Whiteface Mountain and freestyle, free skiing (ski cross, slopestyle and big air) and snowboard (parallel slalom and GS, slopestyle, big air and snowboard cross) events take place an hour south, at Gore Mountain. All sports will hold events for men and for women, unlike the Olympics where the Nordic combined competition does not have a women’s event.

Unlike the NCAAs, participants represent their countries, not their universities. In other words, alpine ski racing’s mixed team parallel event could include racers from Middlebury College and the University of Colorado or other colleges or universities. Participants have to be between 17 and 25 years old and enrolled in a college or university and invited by the sport’s governing body. As of press time, qualifications hadn’t been finalized however Middlebury College ski racer Mika-Ann Reha of Canada had secured a spot and coach Stever Bartlett expects other

teammates will compete too.

“It’s different for every sport,” notes Tommy Biesemeyer, an Olympic downhiller who grew up in the Lake Placid area, raced for the University of Vermont as an undergraduate, and then returned to the area where he coaches at Lake Placid’s Northwood School. “This year it might be tough for a lot of the top alpine skiers in the east to compete as it happens in the middle of the college carnival season and the World Cup and no one wants to get hurt,” he notes. “But in cross-country and other events, you’re likely to see some top competitors.”

THE OLYMPIC VILLAGE

In addition to Biesemeyer who competed in the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, Lake Placid has produced its fair share of Olympians. A new quad chair is named ‘Warhorse’ for another local ski racer, two-time Olympic medalist Andrew Weibrecht—who now works at his family’s Mirror Lake Inn, an elegant resort and spa in Lake Placid. Guests at the resort can even arrange for a private ski session with the Olympian who earned a silver in Sochi and a bronze in Whistler, both in super G.

Olympic biathletes Lowell Bailey, Tim Burke and Maddie Phaneuf all came from the Lake Placid area and now are back in town coaching a new generation.

“I wasn’t alive when the 1980 Olympics were here,” says

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The lounge area the Mt. Van Hoevenberg base lodge looks out on the biathlon and cross-country

ski course. COURTESY ORDA

RENTALS AND LESSONS

Spectators line the bridge that leads from the base lodge at Mt. Van Hoevenberg to the biathlon practice area. It’s a perfect place to watch a mass start. COURTESY ORDA

Phaneuf, 27, who competed in the 2018 Winter Games. “But the town has this Olympic spirit and expectations. As a kid growing up here, it just inspires you,” she said as we toured the Mt. Van Hoevenberg facilities.

Colin Delaney also grew up cross-country skiing on the trails at Mt. Van Hoevenberg and ski jumping. “I think I was 12 or 14 the first time I went down this,” he said as we stood at the top of the 128-meter ski jump that towers over the landscape like a skyscraper. Delaney went on to compete in Nordic Combined on the World Cup and now he too is back as a coach, helping the next generation of ski jumpers speed down the ramp in a tuck and then take off, flying the length of a football field.

As you move around town, it feels like every person, every business is in some way connected to the past Olympics and now, to the FISU Games. At Locker Five – a nod to the locker the gold-medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team used in 1980—you can rent skates and head out on Mirror Lake. In the Grand Adirondack, there’s a chatter of different languages in the lobby as international