USA Luge Director of Marketing and Sponsorships Gordy Sheer, a 1998 silver medalist in doubles luge, helps a camper at the start of the Mount Van Hoevenberg sliding track during a luge fantasy camp in April 2018. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

LAKE PLACID — During the centennial of the first Olympic Winter Games — held from Jan. 25 to Feb. 5, 1924, at Chamonix, France — some local Olympians reflected this week on their Olympic experiences and Lake Placid’s past, current and future roles in the Olympic movement.

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Gordy Sheer

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“Anytime we think about the Olympics, in my book, is a good thing,” said Gordy Sheer, director of marketing and sponsorships for USA Luge, based in Lake Placid.

Lake Placid resident Andrew Weibrecht shows off the silver medal he won in the super-G event during the 2014 Olympic Winter Games at Sochi, Russia. (News photo — Lou Reuter)

Sheer, 52, won a silver medal in doubles with Chris Thorpe at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, and along with the doubles team of Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin, who won the bronze medal, became the first athletes to earn medals for the U.S. luge team. Sheer and Thorpe also competed in the 1992 Olympic Winter Games at Albertville, France, and the 1994 Olympic Winter Games at Lillehammer, Norway.

Though Park City, Utah, still operates its 2002 Olympic sliding track for bobsled, luge and skeleton, Sheer said Lake Placid is the “nerve center” for the sport.

“Lake Placid is absolutely critical for USA Luge,” Sheer said.

His role today is to make sure that the national luge team is well prepared to do its best to represent the U.S. at the Olympics.

“There aren’t a lot of places that have hosted multiple Olympics and have continued to stay relevant in the winter sports world like Lake Placid has,” he said.

U.S. Olympic figure skating silver medalist Paul Wylie smiles in November 2019 at the 1980 Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid. (News photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

Sheer agrees with Weibrecht that Lake Placid is not suited to host a full Winter Olympics but does see New York hosting again, with a “full-state plan” being the best step forward. By incorporating different regions, cities and villages like the Catskills, New York City, Lake Placid or even Buffalo, the full scale of the games could return to the state. Sheer said there has been “lots of talk” about moving to a system of rotating venues at already existing facilities, as building new facilities comes with tremendous cost.

“Imagine opening ceremonies in Yankee Stadium. How cool would that be?” he said. “The I-87 Olympics.”

He noted that the games are becoming more regional, rather than village based, as host cities have venues increasingly farther apart.

Sheer is proud to be a part of the Olympic movement. Some of his earliest memories are watching the Olympics on TV and seeing the parade of nations. His fondest Olympic memory is his first opening ceremony in 1992.

“Walking in the stadium, being a part of the United States team, it’s something that I’d seen and aspired to many times, and to be a part of it was pretty overwhelming,” he said.

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Andrew Weibrecht

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“I’m really excited for the hundredth anniversary,” said Lake Placid’s Andrew Weibrecht, who competed in Alpine skiing at three Winter Olympics, earning a bronze in the Super-G in 2010 at Vancouver, Canada, and a silver in the Super-G in 2014 at Sochi, Russia.

Weibrecht, 37, is currently the operations manager at the Mirror Lake Inn, a family business. He sees the centennial as part of Lake Placid’s identity. The village produced speedskater Charles Jewtraw, the first athlete to win a gold medal at a Winter Olympics, which he did in 1924 at Chamonix, France.

In 1932, Lake Placid hosted its first Olympic Winter Games at the height of the Great Depression and its second Olympics in 1980, which saw two of the most historic events in Olympic history.

“Those are all very iconic moments in sports,” Weibrecht said.

U.S. speedskater Eric Heiden won a gold medal in all five events, setting an Olympic record in each and breaking the world record for the 10,000-meter race by 6.2 seconds.

And the U.S. hockey team, the underdog faced with the Soviet Union’s gold-winning team, won in the semifinals in what is known as the “Miracle on Ice.” Team USA went on to win gold over Finland.

Weibrecht said that Lake Placid has played an important role in the evolution of the Olympics, with the 1980 games roughly marking the transition from small-town Olympics to the sprawling event they have become.

“To be part of the global Olympic movement, (it’s) important for Lake Placid to celebrate and acknowledge,” he said.

Looking to the next century of the Olympic games, Weibrecht said there will be challenges, and the movement is looking more toward sustainability than growth.

“I think we will see a return toward smaller, more sustainable winter games,” he said. “It’s swung so far in the other direction, I think people see a need to return it to the purity of sport.”

Now, he said, the Olympics are too big for a place like Lake Placid to realistically host the whole thing. But, because of the village’s well-kept Olympic venues, he thinks Lake Placid is still well-suited to collaborate with other places to host part of the games.

Weibrecht, who grew up in Lake Placid, sees his hometown as an important part of his experience coming up in sport.

“It’s a place that people, if they want to be at a high level of winter sport, that they gravitate toward,” he said. “It draws people in and has the proper support system and environment to bring the best out of aspiring athletes.”

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Paul Wylie

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“I think it’s an amazing milestone for sport,” said Olympic figure skater Paul Wylie, of Lake Placid.

Wylie, 59, competed in the 1988 Olympic Winter Games at Calgary, Canada, and earned a silver medal in the men’s singles event during the Albertville Games in 1992.

Formerly the director of sport for the state Olympic Regional Development Authority, Wylie currently coaches figure skating. While he didn’t grow grow up in Lake Placid, like many Olympians, he trained here on his way to Olympic glory.

“Just the contribution and the number of people who have trained here that have won gold medals … we have an important role as a community in sport,” he said.

Wylie said he thinks Lake Placid has had a huge role in the Olympic movement. Not only has the village sent successful athletes all over the world, it hosted the games “in an amazing and impressive way” twice during difficult national periods.

“Both times that we hosted it, I think we gave the Olympic movement a huge shot in the arm,” he said.

As climate change threatens the future of the Winter Olympics, Wylie thinks venues will necessarily shift to places where the climate can support winter sports, Lake Placid being one of them.

Though Lake Placid may be a good choice, it has suffered a warm, wet winter this year.

Wylie said it will be just as important to improve snow- and ice-making technology as the next century of Winter Olympics begins.

Wylie thinks that as the Olympics move forward, they are unlikely to grow bigger. He observed that when the International Olympic Committee looks to add a new sport, they also try to subtract one.

“I think that Lake Placid has had an incredible role to play in the creativity (and) the sustaining of all of the sports we’ve participated in here. I think that will continue to go on,” he said.

On hosting the Olympics again, he said from a facilities and athlete-training perspective, Lake Placid is well equipped. It’s the infrastructure to support such a massive gathering that the village lacks.

Wylie is proud to be part of the Olympic movement, and he sees it as one that is vital in the world. He wants to see the rest of the world, as well as the U.S., take the games seriously for all the reasons they were created in the first place. He sees different nations being able to come together for peaceful competition, to have a moment where “it’s humanity we celebrate” as an important ideal.

“That’s kind of phenomenal,” he said.