World Cup fervor ‘unbelievable’ Crowds overflow at event finale

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FORT KENT – Six years ago, few Mainers knew a whole lot about the sport of biathlon.

Officials at the Maine Winter Sports Center helped change that by building a top-notch facility and harboring not-so-secret world-class dreams.

For years, their movie-cute refrain, borrowed from “Field of Dreams,” reverberated across the region: If you build it … they will come.

The unanswered, skeptical response from many: Would they? Would the World Cup circuit really be interested in little Fort Kent, Maine? Would Mainers care that the event was taking place?

Over four days last week, the world’s best biathletes converged on Fort Kent. The town rolled out the red carpet. Volunteers – more than 1,000 of them – queued up to help.

And all of those earlier questions were answered. Emphatically.

Athletes, spectators and media members were housed across the region, from Caribou to St. Francois, New Brunswick.

And the crowds? You wouldn’t believe it.

Three thousand showed up on the first day – a record for a non-Olympic biathlon staged in the United States. Then 4,500 watched on Friday.

On Saturday, the final day of the Ruhrgas IBU World Cup, officials found out a few things.

First, the first three days were just a warm-up.

Second, fans – from all over Aroostook County and elsewhere – would support the event the way they had hoped.

And third? The Fort Kent venue needs a bigger stadium.

An overflow crowd of 6,200 sometimes screaming, eventually cowbell-ringing, and incessantly horn-blowing fans filed into the venue, filling the bleachers an hour and a half before the first race. Then they covered the hillsides. Late-comers ended up in the woods, or climbed trees to improve their vantage points.

“Isn’t this a big deal?” one well-known observer asked after climbing the path to the 10th Mountain Lodge minutes before the first race began.

His eyes were wide. He – like many others in the crowd – seemed overwhelmed by the magnitude the event had taken on.

Then he shook his head, looked back out the door, and grinned. “This is great,” Gov. John Baldacci said.

On the infield, volunteers Yvon Levesque and Don Lavoie, who serve as co-coaches of the Nordic ski teams at Madawaska High School, gawked at the crowd and grinned like the schoolboys they coach.

“I’m getting goose bumps all over me right now,” Levesque said. “It’s unbelievable what has happened here since the onset of this, six years ago.”

When the crowds first began filing into the venue early on Wednesday morning, many had never seen a biathlon before, and it was apparent to those closely affiliated with the sport.

But as the events progressed, and the crowds grew, a change took place.

The sizable throngs transformed themselves. By Saturday, the passive group that allowed itself to be led through the process by enthusiastic public address announcers was gone.

In its place was a frenzied mass of people eager to urge on the athletes … and prove themselves worthy of a world-class event.

“Each day, it was successively more impressive,” said Jerry Kokesh, the U.S. Biathlon Association’s development director and the press officer at the World Cup.

“And today? I guess I didn’t think they could match Friday, but the crowd was significantly more boisterous. And each day, the crowd seemed a little bit more knowledgeable. Perhaps with the stadium announcer’s help. And perhaps with the media’s help.”

One person who noticed was U.S. biathlete Rachel Steer.

“People were definitely learning the sport each day,” Steer said. “The first couple days, I was like, ‘Wow. You guys don’t even know what you’re coming to see today.’ But they were excited every day. I could tell.”

Maine Winter Sports Center officials had always envisioned Fort Kent as a potential World Cup site. When a Canadian site opted out of its scheduled slot on the 2004 schedule, they got their chance.

They made the best of it.

“It feels like another big venue, big event in Europe. It doesn’t feel like the United States,” said U.S. coach Algis Shalna.

That, in case you’re curious, is a compliment.

Shalna competed for the former Soviet Union and has coached for 13 years. He knows world-class. And when it comes to biathlon, European venues are tough to beat.

Shalnas said his expectations of the Fort Kent World Cup were modest.

“I don’t think anybody expected so many people here,” he said. “I thought maybe the stands would get filled up with kids or something, but all these people from all over the County and maybe further down? It’s unbelievable. I never would have expected so many people here. It makes you feel like you’re at the World Championships in Germany.”

Steer, who competes wearing earplugs so that the crowd doesn’t distract her, noticed the crowd. And she noticed a difference from other Cup stops.

“Most of the venues that have this many spectators have stands right behind the range,” Steer said.

Fort Kent’s lone set of bleachers seats about 500 fans.

“It looked so cool to have people climbing trees, and they’re up on the hills and they’re out in the bushes here.”

They were.

And that’s one of the things that IBU officials hope Fort Kent officials will address.

“We need to make the stadium wider. We need to make a longer finish line. The town needs to have a few [more] hotels if they want to do this again,” said Janez Vodicar, the IBU sports director.

Vodicar also said a more difficult course should be created.

“But for the first [attempt], it was really, really good,” Vodicar said. “We must not forget, [the other venues] did not start like they are today. Each year they all grow up.”

Each year, Vodicar said, four sites are virtually guaranteed a World Cup event because of their track record of success.

Those sites – Oberhof and Ruhpolding in Germany, Holmenkollen, Norway, and Antholz, Italy – attract huge crowds and are what Vodicar calls “The A-League.”

The other potential venues vie for the six available World Cup competitions.

“Everybody now knows Fort Kent is a good place,” Vodicar said. “So next year, they can apply with the IBU to get a World Cup.”

The World Junior Championships will be held in Presque Isle in 2006, and Shalna, the U.S. coach, expects another World Cup bid to be granted at some point in the near future.

“I’ve been talking to other coaches. They’re all impressed. When they were coming over here, they didn’t know what to expect, but they saw a world-class facility, world-class management, and I believe they would like to come back.”

Maine’s governor, for one, hopes that happens.

Baldacci served as the official starter for the first mass start race on Saturday, sending the racers on their way with a blast from a shotgun.

He said top-notch events could help spur development in Fort Kent and the St. John Valley.

“We need lodges, we need infrastructure, we need to grow small businesses, because this is not the first and only time they’re going to do something like this,” Baldacci said.

“Andy [Shepard, the CEO of Maine Winter Sports Center] and Maine Winter Sports are going to try to have more of these kinds of events, and frankly, it showcases Aroostook County and Fort Kent, Maine, in a way that we need to work on some of the hotels and some of the lodging facilities so it will help grow the economy.”

In the meantime, Shalna said Fort Kent officials should keep making plans for big events.

“With all the support, with all these people here, with all of what happened here, I think the International Biathlon Union people and athletes and coaches will support this place if they would like to host a World Cup again,” Shalna said. “It will be easy.”