Over the past five years, Lake Placid Olympic facilities have been brought back to life — so much so that they are once again some of the very best in the world.

“Welcome to Mount Van Hoevenberg. This is the Mountain Pass Lodge, which was completed in 2019,” Olympic Regional Development Authority Marketing Manager for Mount Van Hoevenberg Brandee Reilly said during a tour.

The world-class facility, which includes training areas, meeting rooms and a full-service cafe with hot food and beverages, and is now ready to serve as an athlete's village or even home to International Olympic Committee members.

When it became clear that Italy, the host of the 2026 Winter Olympics, would not have a venue suitable for the sliding events, Darcy Norfolk, was responsible for putting together a bid packet for Lake Placid to host those events. Italy, expecting a $60 million cost for a sliding venue, found costs would be closer to $160 million and refused.

In October, organizers told the IOC the Italian government had ordered them to move the events due to cost overruns involved in renovating the Cortina sliding track. Sliding centers in Switzerland and Austria were considered the best options.

Lake Placid hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932 and 1980 and, as home of a U.S. Olympic Training Center, has a state-of-the-art sliding center.

“It's pretty common sense that Lake Placid would never host Olympics, a winter Olympic games on its own, but to host a piece of the Olympics a couple of years from now is really an ideal fit for us,” said Norfolk, director of communications for the Olympic Regional Development Authority.

And while there are a couple of tracks a little closer to Italy, Lake Placid’s bid has a secret weapon — the Italian heritage of New York City, where the athletes would not only fly in, but be celebrated.

“The concept brings in New York City to the level where we would celebrate the athletes within Rockefeller Center and NBC as the main broadcaster. It's a great fit and it would provide a very exciting element to the games,” Norfolk added.

But of course, the highlight of the bid is the facility itself, which includes the Mountain Pass Lodge, and this specialized training area where athletes can practice those starts.

“It's a game changer because you can do 100 pushes here in a couple of days in training when you wouldn't be able to get that number of runs on the track,” Reilly said, saying the track itself is like a washing machine with how it can whip sleds around.

The track itself is one of only a handful of this quality in the world.

“So, when you have a world-class event at this level, you don't want a track that, I don't want to call it easy, but is one that challenges the athletes. And it's, and is a fair play venue,” Norfolk added.

In the end, it's all about partnership. Lake Placid wants nothing more than Italian athletes to feel at home in its Olympic village, and on the track where it would name a turn after an Italian sliding hero — Eugenio Monti — who won a World Cup event in Lake Placid.

And there is precedent for this type of split country competition. This summer’s Olympic games are in Paris, with the surfing events being held in Fiji.

A decision on these sliding events could come any day now.