Before Cortina, There Was Lake Placid: A Look Back at 1980

How in the World Did Lake Placid Do It?

It’s pretty wild to think that a tiny Adirondack village with basically one main road somehow pulled off one of the biggest international sporting events on the planet.

While watching the Winter Games in Cortina, I went down a rabbit hole and started looking back at how Lake Placid, New York — population under 3,000 — hosted the Winter Olympics not once, but twice. First in 1932, and again in 1980.

And somehow…they made it work as you'll see in the gallery below.

By 1980, the Games had grown into a massive global event. Lake Placid had to build a 90-foot ski jump, new hockey and figure skating arenas, a luge run, a refrigerated speed-skating oval, and an Olympic Village to house more than 1,000 athletes from 37 countries.

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On any given day, 51,000 visitors pack into this tiny mountain town. Streets were closed to traffic and converted into pedestrian walkways, and only approved vehicles were allowed in.

More than 6,700 volunteers — many local Adirondack residents — kept everything running smoothly, wearing those now-iconic blue parkas.

And of course, 1980 gave us two unforgettable moments: Eric Heiden’s five gold medals and the “Miracle on Ice,” when a scrappy group of U.S. amateurs stunned the mighty Soviet hockey team.

Not bad for a small town in the Adirondacks

Images From the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, NY