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The Lake Placid bid delegation arrived home at 3 a.m. Tuesday after a 24-hour trip from Innsbruck, Austria. With them were area residents who took advantage of the Adirondack Bobsled Club charter flight to see the IX Olympic Winter Games.

The general consensus was that the trip had been enjoyable and the games worth seeing. By this time, the disappointment of the delegation in the International Olympic Committee had worn off somewhat, and on the whole they felt they had learned much that would be helpful in any future handling of major events.

Provisional Organizing Committee chairman J. Bernard Fell and vice chairman Luke Patnode were expected to arrive later in the week. They expect to hold a meeting of the committee and make a full report to the public.

Mr. Fell said it became clear to them as soon as they began calling on IOC members in Innsbruck that the vote would go heavily against Lake Placid.

They received many compliments, however, on the handling of the bid, including the recently published letter of IOC president Avery Brundage.

The majority of the group left Innsbruck by train at 9 a.m. Monday, which is 3 a.m. EST, in a blinding snowstorm. The charter plane left Munich airport at 12:30 p.m. and touched down at Montreal International Airport at 8:45 p.m. that night local time.

The most difficult part of the trip was to follow. Tri-Lakes Transit school buses sent to pick up travelers broke down and arrived at 11 p.m. at the airport. They spent four hours in unheated buses returning to Lake Placid. In spite of the sub-zero temperatures that greeted them, the travelers agreed it was good to see snow again.

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Bobsled tourism

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In a current examination of Lake Placid Chamber of Commerce winter inquiries, tabulations showed that half of all the letters received asked for information about bobsled racing and public riding of sleds down Mount Van Hoevenberg.

The tremendous newspaper and television coverage given the sport during the World Championships triggered a national interest due to the fact that it is the only run of its kind on the North American continent.

The Mount Van Hoevenberg bobsled run is maintained by the New York State Conservation Department under the supervision of its Ray Brook office. It has attracted as many as 30,000 spectators to a single race.

Walkways and cross bridges make the full mile accessible to seating several thousand viewers of this mile-a-minute sport, built at Zig-Zag, Shady and other vantage points.

The run is built with blocks of ice cut from the Cascade lakes and cemented into the wooden chute with a mixture of snow and water. It is maintained with daily floodings that use up to 20,000 gallons of water at a single application.

A public address system keeps spectators informed from the time the sled leaves the starting line, breaking an electric eye timing device.

Phone relay booths line the bobsled run with one broadcaster reporting the sled’s progress.

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Archives

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To explore the Lake Placid News digital archives, visit the NYS Historic Newspapers website at nyshistoricnewspapers.org. Find the Lake Placid News by clicking on Essex County.