Recently, many have wondered if Lake Placid would ever get the chance to be a part of a third Olympic Games, following 1932 and 1980. While hosting one alone again seems nearly impossible, there is a small chance it could co-host.

The village, and Mt. Van Hoevenberg, have been named an official backup in case Italy cannot get its sled track built in time.

Andrew Weibrecht is a two-time Olympic medalist in skiing, born and raised in Lake Placid. If you visit Lake Placid for its Olympic aura, you can even ski Whiteface Mountain with Weibrecht. He'll take you downhill and show you how it's done, offering help, tips and stories along the way.

“It’s just great to be able to connect with our guests on a deeper level and to provide them with something that's that's very unique,” he said. “You know, there's not a not a ton of places in the world that you can can go and ski with the Olympic medalists."

The 2026 Winter Games are set to take place in Cortina, Italy, but the host city does not yet have a fully ready sled track. If for some reason it doesn't by the time it needs to do so, those events would be held in Lake Placid.

“We're in targeted dialogue, basically, to put together a better next step while they are continuing with the progress of their construction, and then we will get to a place where we'll understand if it is something that we need to activate or not,” ORDA Communications Director Darcy Norfolk said.

If any community understands the importance of hosting an Olympic Games and the legacy that comes with it, it's Lake Placid.

“We’re hopeful that they will get there for their own athletes and their own legacy,” Norfolk said.

While that's a sentiment that Andrew Weibrecht certainly agrees with, there is a small part of him that wonders what it would be like to have yet another Olympic Games in the Adirondacks — both for the village and for places like the Mirror Lake Inn, which Weibrecht’s family owns.

“it's not just the one-off,” he said. “The two weeks a year that that the spectators and the athletes and everything would be in town surrounding the actual event. But it’s the legacy effect of of bringing the visibility to the world back to Lake Placid."

As of right now, there is still no official deadline as to when a decision will be made. However, when or if a track in Italy is finished, there is still a list of things that need to be done before it can be used in an Olympic Games. It needs to be inspected and approved by committees and it needs to be tested by the athletes. They need to know how it works, and that's not something that cannot happen in just days or even weeks.

It is possible that if plan B was activated, New York City would be used as an outlet to get athletes to and from Italy.

Norfolk says the ocean that separates the United States and Italy would be the biggest challenge, but it has been done before, with the recent Summer Games in Paris co-hosting surfing events in Fiji.