BY LAUREN YATES
ADirondack DAILY ENTERPRISE
LAKE PLACID — Hours before athletes paraded their countries’ flags on boats along the River Seine during the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics opening ceremony on Friday, more than 85 summer campers from Camp Placid lined up to make an entrance from the tunnel at the Olympic Speedskating Oval for a parade of their own.
The state Olympic Regional Development Authority partnered with the summer camp for Lake Placid area grade school kids, for the first-of-its-kind Parade of Nations. It was a celebration of the village’s history as a two-time Olympic host, according to ORDA Sport Communications Manager Lisa Carter, as well as an acknowledgement of the broad swath of 203 nations competing in Paris this year.
“I think anytime that we can create opportunities for kids to see what’s out there and have some healthy engagement, it’s really good,” Carter said.
29 COUNTRIES REPRESENTED
Dozens of campers — along with Roni the Racoon, the Olympic mascot from the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid — circled the Oval and waved the flags of 29 countries, from the Olympic birthplace of Greece to Nigeria, Argentina and Estonia. And, of course, there was a flag to represent Team USA.
The Parade of Nations is a longstanding tradition of the Olympic opening ceremony dating back to the London 1908 Olympic Games. Athletes from each country enter the Olympic stadium with their flags to fanfare and cheers from the crowd.
The Camp Placid Parade of Nations didn’t have many spectators, but the campers brought their own fanfare. After the parade, campers broke out into chants rooting for “U.S.A.!”
But ORDA’s Olympic facilities aren’t just training grounds for Team USA, according to Carter. International teams that don’t have Olympic facilities come here to train, too.
“We want to make sure that kids know that part also,” she said. “We’re becoming — hopefully — a more diverse community, and young people feel that even though we’re in such a small village.”
OLYMPIC CELEBRATIONS
Friday’s parade was a culmination of a week-long Olympic celebration for the campers, who spent the week’s camp checking out artifacts from the Lake Placid Olympic Museum, creating tiles for a new mural at Mount Van Hoevenberg, learning about Olympic history and creating their own torches.
Camper Pippa, who’s gearing up for fourth grade at Keene Central School, said learning about Olympic torches was the highlight of her week. She made hers out of a toilet paper roll base and purple paper, using tissue paper for the flames. She’s also a cross-country skier with the New York Ski Educational Foundation, and after the week’s festivities, she said she considers herself an Olympic hopeful.
Camp Placid is a free camp available to Lake Placid area taxpayers. Camp Director Chelsie Geesler, an employee of the town of North Elba, said that while some campers are already involved in sports, this week gave many of the kids their first thorough introduction to Olympic sports and culture.
“I think that we all take advantage of it, living here,” she said. “You don’t think to visit the Olympic Museum, and unless you play a sport in the arena, you don’t really get to go there. So when you do this kind of stuff through the school and through camps, it gives them that.”
The Paris Olympics started on Friday and end on Aug. 11.
Around 10,500 athletes will compete across 32 sports and 329 events.