Empire State Winter Games are back

LAKE PLACID | After 2021's event was canceled due to Covid, the 42nd Empire State Winter Games (ESWG) is set to return to Lake Placid and the Adirondacks from Feb. 3-6, 2022. The ESWG will begin with an Opening Ceremony on Feb. 3 on the same grounds where Lake Placid's 1980 Olympics opened. An estimated 2,000 athletes competing in more than 30 sports here will have Beijing's Winter Olympic Games (opening Feb. 4), to inspire them. Ties between the Empire State Winter Games—the largest multi-sport amateur athletic winter sporting event in North America—and Olympics run deep. Since 2010, 34 athletes who competed in the Empire State Winter Games went on to become Olympians in the 2010, 2014, and 2018 Games. Twelve won Olympic medals and eight would go on to compete in multiple Olympics. That list will surely grow with the 2022 Winter Olympics. How did the ESWG prepare athletes to compete on their sport's ultimate stage? We asked a few local participants. Here's what two of them had to say. TIM BURKE: Lake Placid, biathlon, four-time Olympian. "For a lot of athletes like myself, the Empire State Games were my first experience at a bigger set of competitions that involved not only my own sport but lots of other sports," Burke said. "That feeling is something unique to these athletes that are experiencing it for the first time. Ultimately, that does help prepare athletes for what's to come." Burke said the average person might not know a sport like biathlon, but they know the Empire State Winter Games and the Olympics. The Empire State Winter Games provides practice for the increased level of attention and pressure to land on the podium in a big event. ANDREW WEIBRECHT: Lake Placid, alpine skier, two-time Olympic medalist, three-time Olympian. The size and complexity of the ESWG helped Weibrecht adjust to larger-scale events later in his career, like the Olympics and world championships. "They just have a different feel, a different flow. That's probably what was helpful with an event like the Empire State Games. It takes you out of your normal routine a tiny bit. The more you get to feel that, it helps you go to other (big) events." Weibrecht was 16 and remembers going to watch school classmates play in the hockey tournament. "It's a large event, it's a much bigger event in terms of size and numbers of athletes, and meeting athletes in a number of different sports and being able to see another side to them. It's sort of a one-off, really. There's nothing like that experience that I had until, really, the Olympics." The event is sponsored by Community Bank, N.A., which will again sponsor the pre-Games torch relay.

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Empire State Winter Games are back

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