Exploring an Olympics Bid for New York

**Kuscha Navadar** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Kuscha Navadar. I'm filling in for Brian. Listen, it's been a big sports summer for New York City. We hosted fans and players from around the globe for the World Cup. We cheered Nixon five, especially my wife during the NBA finals. So what's next for this city and state? Maybe, dare I say, the Olympics? That's the hope of our next guest, Assemblymember Robert C. Carroll, who is the Assemblymember for District 44 in Brooklyn, who has proposed that New York City puts in a bid to host a dual-city Winter Olympics in tandem with the mountainous town of Lake Placid. Also happens to be one of my favorite places in the world, but enough about that. Though New York City has never hosted the games before, Lake Placid has hosted the Winter Olympics twice. In 1932 and 1980
The next available year to put in a bid to host the Winter Games is 2042 That is a long time from now, but steps would need to be taken soon to make it happen. The state is considering it seriously. Last month, Governor Cathy Hochul announced an exploratory committee to investigate the possibility of hosting the games in New York. Assembly member Carroll is part of that committee, and we are lucky to have him in the studio, just three feet in front of me, to tell us about his vision.
Assembly member Carroll, welcome to WNYC.

**Robert Carroll** (1:30)
Oh, thank you for having me, Kousha.

**Kuscha Navadar** (1:31)
It's wonderful to have you here. And listeners, we want you here virtually, too. What do you think of the Olympics potentially coming to New York? It would be 16 years from now. Would you be in favor, or do you have concerns about how it would impact your community or your tax dollars? Or, and this is for Winter Olympics fans in the audience, how would you plan a Winter Olympics in New York? Do you have questions for Assembly member Carroll about his planning? Give us a shout. Call or text us at 212-433-9692.
That's 212-433-WNYC.
Okay, Assembly member Carroll, why does your proposal include both Lake Placid and New York City? Why not just one or the other?

**Robert Carroll** (2:14)
Well, you know, I don't think either could host a modern Olympics on their own, right? New York City obviously doesn't have mountains. We don't have ski jumps or bobsled tracks. And a modern Olympics has outgrown small alpine towns like Lake Placid. And the Olympics movement has shown that, right? Just last February, Milan, Cortina held a joint Olympics together. So that was, you know, a big global city Milan hosting the ice events and ceremonies. And Cortina, a classic mountain town that hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics, hosting the alpine and sliding events and Nordic events. That's the concept here. And it actually has happened before that. Even Beijing in 2022, Beijing held the ice events, the ceremonies as well as the big air event, the freestyle skiing event.
And then about 175 miles north of Beijing, they held the sliding events and alpine events and Nordic events.
So this model has been kind of brewing in the Olympic movement, and now it's come out into the open.
And New York City and Lake Placid can capitalize on it like no other. We have the infrastructure right now, so we could actually host these games, right? We have the arenas, the stadiums, and then we have the exotic infrastructure in Lake Placid because Governor Hochul has smartly maintained those facilities and kept them in world class shape, and they host international competitions regularly.

**Kuscha Navadar** (3:46)
Was that your first inspiration for this idea, was seeing that dual city model and thinking, oh, I know a place that that could fly?

**Robert Carroll** (3:53)
Well, it happened just a little bit before. So back in 2022, during the Beijing Games, myself and my former colleague, Assembly Member Billy Jones, who represented Lake Placid, we were aware that the state was investing heavily in the legacy infrastructure of Lake Placid for the World University Games. That was coming up in 2023, and then we noticed that, hey, in Beijing, they're not actually hosting half of the events in Beijing, they're hosting them about 175 miles away, and Lake Placid and New York City are a little farther than that. They're about 275 miles away.

**Kuscha Navadar** (4:27)
Yeah.

**Robert Carroll** (4:27)
But coincidentally, they're the exact same distance apart as Milan and Cortina.

**Kuscha Navadar** (4:32)
That's interesting, because I was going to ask you about that. As somebody who split their lives between upstate and downstate, like my mother lived in Albany, it's where I grew up. My dad lived in New York City. I used to go to Lake Placid to train, do sports like that. It is a long bus ride. It is.