Winter has been very challenging this year. As the weekend approaches ORDA and Lake Placid are working very hard to make the 2016 Empire State Winter Games a reality! But things aren’t going to be easy. Mother Nature has decided to see how resilient we can be in making this race take place. As of Monday Mount VanHovenberg was in said shape, or should I say there is little if any snow on the ground at the range. The penalty area is almost completely bare and we have a forecast of rain and warm weather for Wednesday. Not a good sign!
There has been a great deal of discussion as to whether the races will take place this year. Still the race committee is optimistic that we will be able to make them happen. The final decision will take place Thursday morning, but race registration closes on Wednesday, tomorrow! So what do we do? I have been asking questions about several options related to the races. First of all, if we register and the races are canceled, will we get a refund of our money? The answer I received this morning was yes! Good news, this doesn’t always happen. So should we register for the races, the answer is yes if you want to race and the races are held. Will the race organizers extend the registration another day until after the decision is made about the race, no answer so I would take this to mean no. Today I was asked as to whether we could hold the biathlon races at the Jumps? The answer is a shaky yes! As long as there is a range we should be able to pull it off! But what do we have at the Jumps? There is a 2.5 km loop, so we have one of the distances necessary for our sprint; there is a set of electronic targets located there as well, but only 4; there is no penalty lap area that we are aware of, so put that all together and yes we could pull of our races.
Now the question is what will they look like? We will do a sprint on Saturday and it will probably be 7.5 km for everyone, that is not cast in stone at this point in time nor is it a guarantee that the races will actually happen, but it could. We would have to figure out how we will start, interval, wave, etc. and there would be no penalty laps which means time penalties. So we have one race in the books! Sunday we are scheduled to have a Mass Start race. There really is no way we can pull this off, so that race will have to be changed. We are scheduled to have a four shooting stages in a five lap race. If we do the same course as Saturday that means everyone could be racing a 12.5 km race, not likely to happen. So we have to see if there are cut offs for the course. Will we leave it as a four shooting stage race, will we change it to a two, are there cut-offs, etc. None of these things are decided as of yet.
So here we are ready to make the journey and no decisions are made. Most likely we will find out what is happening when we arrive at the race site on Saturday. I will get the word out on Thursday as quickly as I can, after the decision is made, as to whether there will be a race. Remember we have to get through Wednesday’s forecast of rain, wind and warm temperatures. Even man made snow melts, which is what is in the Jump area. What should we do, I would recommend registering so you at least have a chance to race. After all if your name isn’t on the list by tomorrow evening, it really doesn’t matter what the final decision turns out to be! I hope we can pull this off and we get a great turn out! I look forward to seeing many of you on Saturday morning at the 9 a.m. zero! Hope we don’t lose the rest of the snow!
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