Just as the XXV Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina Italy are set to begin February 6, some 2,500 athletes, coaches and officials will be wrapping up four days of competitions in Lake Placid and surrounding communities in the Empire State Winter Games, the largest and oldest continuous multi sports winter event in the US. This year there are 176 events in 16 disciplines on the schedule.

This is the 46th edition of the New York based winter games which began in 1982 and have been held every year since, except 2020 when they were curtailed due to COVID. This year there will be competition in 21 sports, including adaptive, using the modernized Olympic venues in Lake Placid and nearby community sites. Some of the sports will have age group competitions. (more than 150 seniors are expected to compete this year.)

There are 30 states that host Olympic style multi-sport events like the Empire State games. But most focus on warm weather competitions and the others with traditional winter sports limit those to figure skating and hockey. New York is the only one with a menu that includes bobsled, luge, skeleton, biathlon, cross country skiing and ski jumping.

The New York games are not a seat of the pants operation. A 400-mile torch relay starting in Buffalo kicks off the event in Lake Placid with the lighting of the flame at the opening ceremonies. All participants receive branded outfits before the opening, and there are medal presentations after each event.

The original Empire State Games were first held in the summer of 1978. The Winter Games were added four years later. Most of the participants are from New York State but that is not a requirement. Since the games began, more than 35 of the athletes have gone on to become Olympians, 12 of whom have won Olympic medals, including Nordic Combined gold medal winner Billy Demong and two-time alpine medalist Andrew Weibrecht.

Before his first Olympic medal in the Super G in 2010, Weibrecht was a three-time Empire State Games participant, competing as a teenager in the alpine events in 2003, 04 and 06. “It was my first multi-sport competition” he recalls.   “It was a lot of fun meeting athletes from all the other sports.”

Turns out it is also a shared experience in the Weibrecht family. As an athlete, Andrew competed against brothers John and Ethan in alpine events. His wife Denja, daughter of former Olympic ski Jumper Jay Rand, also competed in the games and last year, the oldest of their three children Ada, then 9, participated in ski jumping.

Today, Weibrecht, as a manager at the family-owned Mirror Lake Inn in his hometown of Lake Placid, sees The Empire State Winter Games from a different perspective. ” It is a great winter event. With all the athletes and their families, it brings a special energy to town between the Martin Luther King holiday and President’s Week.”

The games almost became just a sports footnote a dozen years ago. Funded for many years through New York’ s Parks and Recreation Agency, the financial crunch of 2008-9 forced the state to withdraw funding for the event. While the summer games were cancelled, officials from the Lake Placid Visitors and Tourism Bureau – now ROOST -spearheaded a campaign to raise private funds to underwrite the winter games. It worked, and the games have been underwritten by corporate sponsors since 2010.

The Empire State Winter Games this time will kick off Thursday Feb 5 and wrap up four days later Sunday Feb 8. In addition to the traditional events program shared by the Winter Olympics, there will be competition in ski orienteering, winter triathlon, snowshoe sprints and relays, and most popular for adaptive athletes: sled hockey.

You won’t see the Empire State Winter Games on network television in prime time. But some of that same competitive spirit and enthusiasm that we’ll be watching in Italy will once again be on display in Lake Placid just days before.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Phil Johnson

Phil Johnson began his career as a sports writer for the Leominster (Ma) Enterprise then the Rochester (NY) Times Union. He wrote his first ski column in1972. Leading up to the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, he wrote regularly for UPI and Adirondack Life magazine. As a freelance writer in the 1980’s, his articles appeared in Sports Illustrated, Travel & Leisure, Skiing, Snow Country, Women’s Sports, The Conservationist and Field & Stream. Since 1994, he has written a weekly ski and winter sports column, first for the Amsterdam (NY) Recorder then, from 2011 through 2023 for the Daily (Schenectady NY) Gazette.

Latest posts by Phil Johnson (see all)

• Another Miracle: How Lake Placid Could Again Host The Winter Olympics - March 5, 2026
• Empire State, the Other Winter Games - January 19, 2026
• Drowsy Driving - December 18, 2025