Brooklyn Assemblyman Bobby Carroll has a dream: skiers, skaters, lugers, curlers, and others, the best in the world, congregating right here in New York, between New York City and Lake Placid, for one of the only events that can still really bring the whole globe together: the Winter Olympics.
We agree and let’s start planning to light that flame.
Carroll and former Lake Placid Assemblyman Billy Jones explained this audacious yet obvious split location plan in these pages in December. Yesterday, Carroll wrote of his personal experience at last month’s Winter Games that were jointly held in the Italian city of Milan and the mountains of Cortina.
We have the city and we have the mountains.
This is not a dream that’s around the corner, as it won’t happen until 2042, but it will only be possible by setting the groundwork now and making the pitch that we’re ready, willing and able. We’re heartened to hear that Gov. Hochul feels the same way, as there’s no reason that our great state should not be the world’s stage, having last hosted the Winter Games back in 1980.
Call it a matter of New York pride. Our friendly rivals across the country in Los Angeles are all set to host the Summer Olympics for the third time in 2028, and other global cities like London and Paris have also had their turns at the Olympic spectacle three times, including recently. New York will play host to part of the FIFA World Cup finals this year. We should have our shot at the only global sporting event bigger than that.
A lot has changed since 1980. Back then, there were predictions of the end of New York City itself as a thriving, global metropolis, threatened as it was by its fiscal crisis and tiny Lake Placid had tremendous logistical difficulties moving the huge crowds of fans around. But it was memorable, with the thrilling “Miracle on Ice” when a squad of college kids largely from the University of Minnesota and Boston University beat the mighty Soviet team of professionals which hadn’t lost an Olympic match in more than a decade.
New York 2042 would have the skating events in the city, which can easily handle crowds of any size and have the mountain events up in Lake Placid. As Carroll wrote, it worked very well in Italy.
Olympics are a time to showcase the values of a host city and the New York values are those an ethnically, religiously, socially, intellectually, culturally diverse society that is all the better for it, where neighbors want to look out for each other and our government and civil institutions strive to actually make people’s lives better, imperfectly, but consistently.
Some might think, given the significant issues facing New Yorkers, that the efforts by Carroll and others to bring the Games here are somewhat quaint or pointless, but we disagree. Just because we might have serious and complicated problems does not mean that we have to choose between addressing them and thinking ahead to something joyful that’ll make us proud.
We should want to be celebrating sport, cooperation and meritocracy at a moment when so much of our leadership has embraced cheating, domination and cronyism as their guiding principles. Plus, hosting the Olympics has sometimes served as a way to grease the wheels for more significant public investments in amenities that all residents can enjoy, during and after the Games. Two for one deal, if you ask us.