Olympians can be seen in the Empire State Winter Games, as well. New York’s Empire State Winter Games are back, and the countdown to them has already begun. It will be 30 days until the 2022 ESWG’s Opening Ceremony when it will be on Jan. 5.
It was called off last year because of COVID-19. The 42nd Empire State Winter Games will be held in Lake Placid and the Adirondacks from Feb. 3-6, 2022, when they will be held again.
This year’s ESWG will start with the Opening Ceremony on Feb. 3. It will be held on the same grounds where the Lake Placid Olympics opened in 1980.
On February 4, the 2022 Winter Olympics will start with their Opening Ceremony. The opening ceremony for the 2022 Winter Olympics will be on Feb. 4.
It’s thought that about 2,000 people will compete in more than 30 different sports, around the same time as the Olympic Games.
In many ways, the Empire State Winter Games are linked to the Olympics in a very strong way. They include Bill Demong, Tim Burke, Andrew Weibrecht, and Erin Hamlin, all of whom have competed in both the Olympics and the ESWG, and they all live in the same city as us!
To get the hat and jacket, I remember being very excited. That kind of event helps athletes like me put what we’re trying to do into perspective, says Demong, who has won two Olympic medals and five in Nordic Combined. “It’s like a bridge, it’s a big step up from the normal Bill Koch junior competitions.”
There was Demong, who was born and raised in Vermontville. He competed from the ages of 13 to 15.
Demong said that “absolutely, every competition helps you plan your next one.”
The Opening Ceremony felt real to Demong when he was young.
This is why it’s important to be part of a big event: “It’ll help if you decide to keep going.” But, if you stop right now, your favourite sports memory would be that “I competed in the Empire State Games.”
Burke, who was born in Paul Smith’s and now lives in Lake Placid, had the same experience as the ESWG.
Some athletes, like Burke, had their first experience competing in a bigger set of competitions that included not just their own sport but many other sports at the Empire State Games, which took place in New York. Burke, a four-time Olympian, said: This is a feeling that only these athletes who have never felt it before will get to enjoy for the first time. There is a reason for that. It does help athletes get ready for what’s to come.
They took place inside a speed skating oval in Lake Placid. Everybody was there. There was a big stage, and there were a lot of speakers and other people. That had a very different feel to it than anything else I had ever felt before.
Burke said that most people don’t know about biathlon, but they know about the Empire State Winter Games and the Olympics. The Empire State Winter Games are a good way to get used to getting a lot of attention and feeling pressure to do well in a big event.
You learn to stay with your own routine and not try to do things in a different way.” When it comes down to it, the race still runs that long. For us, the targets are still the same size, so we don’t have to worry about them getting bigger. And what makes you good at a small race also makes you good at a big one.
A two-time Olympic medalist in alpine skiing, Weibrecht was also a three-time Olympian. The size and complexity of the ESWG helped him adapt to bigger events later in his career, like the Olympics and the world championships.
The way they look and move is different. That’s probably what was good about an event like the Empire State Games, where people could meet each other. Getting out of your normal routine a little bit makes you think a little bit different. “The more you feel that, the more you can go to other big events.”
In Lake Placid, I was able to see the ESWG from a young child’s point of view every year. At a certain point in his life, it was one of the things he was looking forward to. Some of the most successful athletes in the area were competing in the Empire State Winter Games when I was a young child. It was an aspirational thing for me to want to do that, too. I remember getting to race and having a lot of fun. Because it lived up to what I had hoped,
In high school, Weibrecht went to the hockey tournament to see his friends play, and he was 16.
You get to meet athletes from many different sports and see another side to them at this big event. It’s bigger in terms of both how big it is and how many athletes there are. A one-time thing. There was nothing like it until the Olympics, he said.
When Hamlin, a four-time Olympic medalist, was 15, he didn’t compete outside of the United States until then. So it was a big deal for him to compete in the multi-day, multi-sport Empire State Winter Games, which took place over a few days. It gave her “that tiny peek into the experience of what an Olympics is like.”
A lot of people find that having more experience in a bigger racing environment is very beneficial. In luge, there isn’t a lot of room for that. “When you’re a junior, there aren’t a lot of big-race chances.” One year, the ESWG was also the junior nationals. When I won junior nationals, it was the first time I had ever won both in the same game.
You get excited when you get the team windbreaker jacket and pants. The Olympics are the most exciting time.
During the Empire State Winter Games, 34 athletes went on to become Olympic athletes in the 2010, 2014, and 2018 Games.
