Could there be a Winter Olympics bid in New York’s future?

Assembly Member Robert Carroll is spending this winter not just in Albany, but in Italy at the Winter Olympics. The Brooklyn Democrat is walking the venues, watching events and imagining a future in which New York City and Lake Placid in the Adirondacks share the games – maybe in 2042. The call for bids will likely happen at the end of next year.

The Milan Cortina Games are the first to officially be cohosted by two cities. Like New York City and Lake Placid, they’re about a five-hour drive from each other. Lake Placid has already hosted the Winter Olympics twice, most recently in 1980, so the sports infrastructure already exists.

While Carroll envisions a dual-city partnership, complete with an opening ceremony in Times Square, critics worry that there is much public investment needed to improve the hosting capacity of Lake Placid.

City & State spoke to Carroll while he was in Italy about his efforts to make a New York Winter Olympics a reality. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us more about your vision for the New York City-Lake Placid Winter Olympics.

There’s this great opportunity to take these newly modernized facilities in Lake Placid and connect them with the state-of-the-art facilities in New York City – Madison Square Garden, the Barclays Center, UBS Arena, Citi Field, Yankee Stadium, the U.S. Tennis Center – and host a winter games where we would not have to build any new sports infrastructure.

That’s the model that they’re using here in Milan Cortina. I would say our opportunity is even better. They still had to build some things. Our existing sports infrastructure is, I think, much more state of the art. And we have this great opportunity to welcome the world.

For the Lake Placid portion, you don’t anticipate that the area would have to take on debt or build any more facilities in order to make these games happen?

Gov. (Kathy) Hochul invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the last number of years to fully modernize those sites for the World University Games in 2023. She’s done a phenomenal job of helping to modernize those facilities and bring them up to truly world-class, competition-ready facilities.

Have you heard much pushback?

I think there are contrarian people always. There are arguments like you were bringing up about costs or logistics. I think also they’re thinking about a Summer Games. This is a third of the size of the Summer Games, split in half between two areas, and we have to build no new infrastructure.

You’ve talked about launching an exploratory committee for this proposal. What would that group need to do in its first year, and who needs to be at that table?

Gov. Hochul, again, has been a great supporter of Lake Placid in the past. I think it would be her role to launch that. Obviously, Mayor (Zohran) Mamdani would have to be at that table, as well as the mayor of Lake Placid. And then bringing civic, political, business and sports leaders from both regions together. It could be 30 or 40 people to say, “What would this actually look like? What are the financial obligations? What are the legal obligations? What are the logistics, and do we want to move forward?”

If the games did happen in New York, what events are you elbowing everyone out of the way for to attend in person?

Hockey, figure skating, curling, those are all tons of fun. The big air competition, if we could have it at Citi Field or Yankee Stadium, which they’ve done before in big stadiums, I think would be absolutely spectacular. And then in Lake Placid, you know, the bobsled or the men’s downhill skiing are also just such fantastic events.

So those five events?

I’m a big sports fan. It’s been fantastic to be here. I got to see some hockey and some speed skating. I’m going to go see some figure skating, and then when I’m in Cortina, I’m going to see some bobsled and some curling. It’s been a lot of fun, and it’s been a trip of a lifetime. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to come here while we were on recess on my own dime.

I wanted to ask about the congressional race happening in your backyard between Dan Goldman and Brad Lander. You endorsed Goldman in the open primary four years ago, and now you’re backing Lander. What’s changed?

Brad is just a great friend of mine. I think he’s the right person for the job. I think he’s a clear progressive voice, a champion and an organizer for 20 years in and around that district. I think he’s the better choice in that congressional seat.