OLYMPIC SPIRIT SHINES BRIGHT IN LAKE PLACID
Home of Miracle on Ice rolls out month of festivities for Pyeongchang
With the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics underway, Lake Placid has rolled out the welcome mat for travellers who won’t make that trip but might want to celebrate in a village that embraces the Olympic spirit like nowhere else.
Lake Placid is one of only three places to host two Winter Olympics. (St. Moritz, Switzerland and Innsbruck, Austria, are the others.) The heroics of the U.S. hockey team and speed skater Eric Heiden helped make the 1980 Lake Placid Games one for the ages, one with an enduring legacy. The town also hosted the 1932 Olympics.
Today, it’s nearly impossible to go anywhere in the village without encountering somebody in training for something — whether it’s skiing, bobsledding, mountain biking or the region’s Ironman triathlon.
“Everything about it, it’s the whole vibe,” said Lisa Weibrecht, a former luge athlete for the United States whose son, Andrew, has won silver and bronze medals in downhill skiing at the past two Winter Olympics and is gunning for gold in South Korea.
“It’s a beautiful place, but the number of athletes going to the Olympics who live and train here speaks to the kind of lifestyle and activities people engage in every day. I don’t think there’s another place in the world like it, maybe St. Moritz.”
The Olympic tradition has been front and centre in the month-long celebration in Lake Placid.
On top of a four-day Empire State Winter Games and the lighting of a Lake Placid Olympic cauldron that marked the start of the Pyeongchang Games, on Feb. 24 the Team USA Winterfest will roll into town. These festivities feature athlete meet-and-greets, interactive experiences and activities such as the Team USA Bobsled Boomerang and the Team USA Curling Challenge.
Part of what made the 1980 Games special was the close proximity of the Olympic venues, all within 13 kilometres of the community’s Main Street. Nothing’s changed, save improvements made by the state-run Olympic Regional Development Authority, which maintains venues.
Visitors can make the short drive down Route 73 to Mount Van Hoevenberg to ride in a bobsled or on a skeleton, ski the cross-country network of groomed trails used during the 1980 Winter Games, or ski and shoot at the biathlon centre. (Reservations are highly recommended for sliding sports, which are dependent on track and weather conditions.)
On the edge of town sits the Olympic Jumping Complex. Today, the complex comprises 120-metre and 90-metre ski jump towers. Visitors can zoom up the 26 storeys in an elevator to get a bird’s-eye view from the top. You can also ride a chairlift to the base of the jumps.
About 11 km down Route 86 sits Whiteface Mountain, which hosted Olympic Alpine events in 1980 and boasts the greatest vertical drop (3,166 feet/965 metres), in the East. Whiteface features 11 lifts and 87 trails with varying terrain for skiers and snowboarders.
For most of the last three decades, Ski Magazine has ranked Whiteface-Lake Placid No. 1 for off-hill activities. Its readers selected it the No. 2 resort overall in the eastern United States. That’s partly because overnight options are more varied than ever, from bed-and-breakfasts like Cobble Mountain Lodge and
The number of athletes going to the Olympics who live and train here speaks to the kind of lifestyle and activities people engage in every day.
the Interlaken Inn, to chain mainstays Marriott, Hampton Inn, and Crowne Plaza, to the stately Mirror Lake Inn Resort and Spa operated by Ed and Lisa Weibrecht since the late 1970s.
The Cottage at the edge of Mirror Lake is one of the area’s most popular après ski sites and planned an opening ceremony party on its outside deck with a big-screen TV. It’s also created Olympic-themed drinks like the War Horse, named after Andrew Weibrecht, a twotime Olympic skier and medallist who achieved notoriety in men’s super G events at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, where he won a bronze medal, then again as in Sochi in 2014, where he took home a silver medal.
“It’s pretty exciting,” Ed Weibrechts said.