Lake Placid Venues

Lake Placid Venues
By: John Wilkins

    Lake Placid, NY, is a mountain town that you really can’t grow up in without getting a taste of athleticism, thanks to all the the venues it has to offer.  Lake Placid has some amazing winter Olympic sport training facilities such as Whiteface Mountain, The Olympic Training Center (OTC), The Oval, The Olympic Sports Complex which is home of the Luge, Skeleton, and Bobsled track, The Olympic Center (know as the rink), and the Olympic Jumping Complex.  Thanks to all of these venues Lake Placid is a pretty athletic town, and the majority of people in it all have a sport that they compete in.

    Whiteface Mountain is one of the most fun, known, and to myself and the entire ski and snowboard team, the most important venue around.  Whiteface Mountain is an amazing mountain for skiing and snowboarding whether you like to race, take laps through the park, or if you just want to have fun skiing around on a nice day with your family. Whiteface has had competitions from USASA Slope styles, USSA races, to World Cup Boardercross, and even the Olympics in 1932 and 1980.  Then in the summer you can take a scenic gondola ride to the top to either take in the breath taking views of the Adirondacks, or ride your mountain bike down if your brave enough to try.
    Right outside of the Public high school and Arena, Lake Placid offers the beautuful speed skating oval.  The oval has been used for so many different activities from speed, and free skating around it, to the basketball court next to it, all the way to the rail jams and the jumps that have been built in the middle of it to be hit by snowboarders being towed in by snowmobiles.
    You could say the Olympic Jumping Complex is the most interesting venue viewed by tourists that come to Lake Placid in the summer.  On Thursdays they have “Soaring Thursdays” which is when they have a ski jumping exhibition on the 90m ski jump where people pay $14.00 to watch.  On Wednesdays they have “Wet & Wild Wednesdays."  On Wet & Wild Wednesdays Aerialist skiers, Free ride Skiers and Snowboarders hit a jump going anywhere from 15-65 mph doing tricks like single, double, and triple flips landing in a pool.  At the bottom of the pool there are air compressors that cover the pool in bubbles to soften the landings for the athletes.  The ramps also have three olympic trampolines to warm up on before one hits the jump and to also learn new tricks to try later on the ramps.
    Everyone knows about the famous Lake Placid Olympic Center better known as "the rink" to the locals, where the U.S. snatched the 1980 Olympic gold medal in hockey from the Soviet Union.  This is where NSA’s hockey teams train for there competition season.  Also their is a gym downstairs from the rinks that all of our athletes use throughout the year.
    Olympic Training Center is a facility for aspiring olympic athletes to eat, sleep, live, and train for there certain discipline.  The OTC has a dinning area, dorms, a gym, olympic trampoline, and many more tools for the athletes to use to help them get better at there sport.  The OTC has 96 rooms, 19 of which are used year round.  It is also the home of some of our athletes such as Aidan Kelly, a Luger who slides at the Olympic Sports Complex.
    The Olympic Sport Complex is the home of Lake Placid Luge, Skeleton, and Bobsled track.  The Luge track has 20 intense turns to get through at speeds around 60 mph.  The fastest anyone has gone down the track in Lake Placid was an astonishing 84 mph.