Lake Placid 1932: A far-fetched dream becomes an Olympic reality
The unlikeliest of bidders to host the III Olympic Winter Games, Lake Placid went from a small resort town in the USA to a prominent winter sports destination in a few short years, thanks to the vision and support of the local community.
The visionaries
Dr Godfrey Dewey and Henry Uihlein II were instrumental in bringing the III Olympic Winter Games to Lake Placid. Dewey, the President of the Lake Placid 1932 Organising Committee, and Uihlein, a businessman and speed skating enthusiast, worked together to make their Olympic dream a reality. When Dewey took over as head of the Lake Placid Club from his father in the 1920s, Lake Placid was the leading ski resort in the eastern USA but entirely lacked the facilities needed to host an event of the scale of the Olympic Winter Games. During the same decade, Uihlein used his passion for speed skating to bring the International Outdoor Speed Skating Championships to Lake Placid in 1920. His efforts gave Lake Placid worldwide recognition and proved that the village could host high-level international events.
While Dewey and Uihlein recognised that Lake Placid lacked the facilities at the time to host an event of the scale of the Olympic Winter Games, they saw the potential of bringing the Games to the area.
In 1929, Dewey almost single-handedly won over sceptics, led Lake Placid’s winning bid, and secured the funding needed to build the venues and infrastructure required to host the Games during an era of tumultuous economic hardships.
Helping hands
The success of the III Olympic Winter Games was largely due to a large group of enthusiastic volunteers, who performed tasks like staffing the feed stations for the cross-country skiing events and repairing the bobsleigh track when unseasonably warm weather caused it to melt. Unbeknownst to them, their dedication and passion for the Games inspired the volunteer programme that was implemented when Lake Placid hosted the Olympic Winter Games for a second time in 1980. That volunteer programme has since been developed and expanded upon by subsequent host cities. To this day, Lake Placid’s community is widely known for its volunteerism, which plays a prominent role in the region’s continuing ability to attract and organise major sporting events.
A foundation for future growth
The III Olympic Winter Games had beneficial and lasting effects on the local economy. As well as boosting tourism in the region, they demonstrated that even a small and relatively unknown resort in New York’s Adirondack Mountains could stage international sporting competitions as successfully as the well-established resorts of the Alps. Lake Placid remains a popular destination to this day. In 2022/23 alone, Lake Placid and its sports facilities, several of which were used at the III Olympic Winter Games, attracted over 1 million visits and generated a total economic impact of USD 341.8 million in the local economy, which supported 3,414 jobs.
A hub for winter sport
With the resort firmly established as one of the USA’s leading winter sports destinations, New York State’s Olympic Regional Development Authority venues hosted over 50 elite sporting events in 2022/23, including the Lake Placid 2023 FISU World University Games, the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup and the IBSF Para Bobsleigh World Championships. These venues, which include the 1932 Jack Shea Arena and the Lake Placid Olympic Jumping Complex, are also widely used by the local community and visitors alike.