Winter Sports Festivals
Cold Weather Fun For Athletes & Fans
Whether it’s a competitive alpine ski race to the finish or a fun cross country obstacle course for kids, snow sporting events have found a home in festivals and state games across the nation. Spanning competitive ventures that lead to the Olympic trials or just amateur fun, winter festivals do more than just celebrate the arrival of Old Man Winter; winter festivals are big wins for participants, planners and host cities from the East Coast to the West Coast. Here, SportsEvents profiles three winter festivals showcasing a variety of cold-weather sports.
Steamboat Springs Winter Carnival
Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club is preparing for the 94th annual Steamboat Springs (Colo.) Winter Carnival (SSWC) in February. Started in the early 1900s as a way to help locals overcome cabin fever during the height of the winter season, the carnival brings out thousands of locals and tourists for a fun-packed week of street and mountain snow events.
“Certainly, there are people who come every year for this event,” said Rick Devos, executive director of Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club, which organizes the Steamboat Springs Winter Carnival in the popular Colorado ski town. “It’s really about a community that learned to celebrate a brutal season. We get massive amounts of snow. Little bits have been added to the carnival over the years, but they have held on to a lot of the old events.”
The SSWC is the longest-running winter carnival west of the Mississippi, and it features approximately 20 events that embrace Steamboat Springs’ western heritage and highlight its tradition of winter sports. The festivities include ski jumping, dual slalom bicycle racing, snowboarding, snow tubing, soda pop slalom, chariot racing, the diamond hitch parade featuring the Steamboat Springs High School band on skis, and street events with horse and rider pulling kids on skis down the city’s Main Street.
SSWC draws approximately 7,000 participants each year, Devos said. “The people who participate in the events are still mostly locals…and mostly kids. The tourists and guests absolutely come down…there will be crowds eight to 10 people deep for the street games.”
The events weren’t set up to be competitive, with the exception of the Gelende ski jumping events. “We host the nationals for this sport during the carnival. It’s a unique event that draws a unique group,” Devos said.
Hosted in cooperation with Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association, the winter carnival requires the involvement of a number of independent community groups to be a success. “You get the buy-in of the whole community by doing it this way,” Devos said.
Devising the overall carnival as 25 separate events proved to be an effective approach, according to Devos. “I want 25 events that look like they were individually managed so they look good,” he said, adding that an independent organizing committee puts a great deal of thought and preparation into planning each individual sporting competition.
Badger State Winter Games
With 5,000 athletes, the Badger State Winter Games in Wassau, Wis., is billed as the “largest winter sports event in the country,” according to Ron Vincent, CEO of the Wisconsin Sports Development Corp. (WSDC).
Conceptualized following a bid by the city of Madison to host the Junior Olympic trials, the Badger State Games (BSG) began with the summer games in 1985; the winter games were added in 1988. Both summer and winter games were modeled on the philosophy that everyone plays regardless of age or ability, Vincent said.
BSG features 15 sports, including such snow sporting events as alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, ski jumping, snowboarding and snowshoe racing. “We are more about participation than competition. We want everyone to come out and play,” Vincent said, adding that about 95 percent of the 5,000 participants are from Wisconsin. “We’ll have kids cross country skiing at 4 years old and adults skiing at 80,” Vincent said. “It’s just fun."
While 65 percent of the participation in the events comes from children 12 and under, Vincent said that some of the notoriety of BSG is associated with the adult sports because “it’s hard to find quality adult events. Adult hockey is one of our biggest—we’ll have about 700 participate in that event.”
Vincent said BSG is also host to one of the biggest figure skating events in the Midwest. “The figure skating event can be a ticket to the Olympic trials.”
Most events are held within 60 miles of Wassau. Since many of the participants’ families travel with them, the impact equates to about 2.3 people per athlete, according to Vincent. “The economic impact is about $1.2 to $1.3 million.”
To pull off an event of this magnitude, the WSDC relies heavily on sports commission representatives. “We try to find commissioners with influence and reach in particular sports,” Vincent said. “We challenge them to help us make their sports better.”
Finding the best venues also contributes to the “overall experience” for each athlete. “We try to find the best venues that we can in the area so they know the tournament will be well run,” Vincent said, adding that creating opportunities for the athletes to experience the community is also part of the effort to focus on the “athlete’s experience. We are conscious of scheduling in that regard. We try to work with CVBs and local chambers of commerce to make opportunities available to athletes.”
Empire State Winter Games
Held in Lake Placid, the Empire State Winter Games (ESWG) is an amateur athletic event for residents of the state of New York and is conducted by New York State Parks, with the support of The New York Lottery and The Olympic Regional Development Authority.
Celebrating its 28th year this February, ESWG was conceptualized after Lake Placid hosted the Olympics Games in 1981, said ESWG Executive Director Fred Smith. “At that time, we had 400 athletes and five sports. Today, we host approximately 1,400 athletes competing in 11 different sports over a three-day period. In the last Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, 11 percent of the entire U.S. team had participated in the ESWG.”
Participants of all ages come from every part of the state; in fact, all 62 counties were represented at last year’s games, Smith said. “The games have developed from strictly a competitive event to a family weekend event, with great special events like opening ceremonies, a Winterfest, and a Saturday Night Chill Out.” The Saturday night event includes a live band, food, games, fireworks, and prizes—all outdoors next to the Olympic Arena.
The ESWG includes alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsled, cross country skiing, figure skating, women’s ice hockey, luge, skeleton, ski jumping, snowshoe, and speedskating. All athletes must qualify or meet certain qualifying standards in order to compete, according to Smith.
Approximately 5,000 spectators come out to cheer on the athletes,” Smith said, which accounts for a $2 million to $3 million economic impact each year. Like other larger winter sports tournaments, ESWG is successful largely due to the ability to recruit the best volunteers who have strong ties and connections to a particular sport.
The availability of the world-class facilities of Lake Placid also is integral to the success of the ESWG, which, Smith said, makes planning easier than the state’s summer games. “The logistics of [finding good facilities] are really minimized because we have the facilities at Lake Placid.”