Lending a helping hand
The volunteer programme rolled out for the Olympic Winter Games Lake Placid 1980 provided a model for other host cities to follow. The region’s community of volunteers remains very active today.
Set up by the Organising Committee, the Lake Placid 1980 volunteers programme involved the recruitment, training and management of 6,700 volunteers. They came from all walks of life and had knowledge and experience of the events to which they were assigned.
That community has its roots in the III Olympic Winter Games, held in Lake Placid in 1932, when local residents volunteered to perform such tasks as staffing the feed stations for the cross-country skiing events and preparing the bobsleigh track. The community plays a prominent role in the region’s continuing ability to attract and organise major events such as World Cup luge, bobsleigh, skeleton and freestyle skiing competitions. Recruited and supervised by the New York Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA), volunteers perform a variety of functions at these events, from stewards and credential checkers to scoring helpers and car park attendants.
Lake Placid’s many volunteers also assist with non-sporting events and activities, such as National Trails Day. They lend their services as ambassadors at the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST)’s welcome centre and help out at the Lake Placid Center for Arts and the Lake Placid Olympic Museum, among other venues.
Volunteers also assist with the regular anniversary celebrations held to commemorate the staging of the XIII Olympic Winter Games in 1980. These include the annual Lake Placid Loppet, a mass-participation cross-country skiing race held on the trails of the Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Sports Complex. The 25th anniversary celebrations in 2005 featured a 1980 Winter Olympics Reunion Party attended by the volunteers themselves. They were also an integral part of the 40th anniversary events in early 2020, joining athletes, organisers and Olympians to share their stories and experiences.
Though helpers had been involved at previous Olympic Games, it was at Lake Placid 1980 that the current model of volunteering began to develop, with the Organising Committee incorporating the recruitment, training and management of volunteers into its planning. Subsequent organising committees have refined the model and relied on increasingly large numbers of volunteers. Regarded as the “face” of the Games, volunteers now account for approximately a quarter of all Olympic Games accreditations.