Return of World Cup planned for 2009 Viable housing plan needed to keep event

FORT KENT – The organizers of the 2004 biathlon World Cup stop at the 10th Mountain Ski Center learned a lot in the wake of planning for a major international event, from how to structure their committees to what kind of materials to spread on icy patches in the spectator areas of the facility.

The organizing committee for Fort Kent’s next biathlon World Cup is hoping to apply those lessons when the event returns to the ski center March 12-15, 2009.

But any advance work could be for naught if the committee’s housing plan isn’t acceptable to the International Biathlon Union, which will travel to Fort Kent this summer to see how much progress has been made in preparing for an event that drew about 18,000 people to northern Maine over four days in 2004.

“That’s one of a number of challenges that we’re going to have for this event,” said Andy Shepard, the president and chief executive officer of the Maine Winter Sports Center, who helped Friday morning to announce the start of the World Cup push. “One of the things we’ve figured out in the last five years of planning for World Cups is this community has a remarkable ability to solve those kinds of problems.”

The 2009 World Cup will be the fifth major international event that the Maine Winter Sports Center, which also includes Presque Isle’s Nordic Heritage Ski Center, has hosted in northern Maine since 2004. Fort Kent and Presque Isle are two of four U.S. sites and about 20 worldwide licensed to host a World Cup.

“It’s clear to me [10th Mountain’s] reputation has spread far and wide through the biathlon community and we’re going to have a much, much bigger event in 2009 than we did in 2004,” said U.S. Biathlon Association executive director Max Cobb.

Considering the numbers are expected to grow, finding places to house approximately 300 athletes, coaches, and officials, along with spectators and media, which in 2009 will include six television networks from Europe, is a primary concern. Organizers placed more than 1,000 in rooms last year.

There are no solid plans for more hotel rooms in the immediate Fort Kent area, Shepard said, and a University of Maine-Fort Kent dormitory that housed more than 100 athletes in 2004 will be unavailable in 2009.

Organizers will compile a list of hotels, motels, inns, bed and breakfasts, camps, private rooms and houses, both in the U.S. and across the border in Canada, where about 150-200 athletes and media stayed in 2004, to determine housing needs.

If the IBU isn’t satisfied when it sees the housing plans this summer, there’s a chance it could pull the World Cup from Fort Kent and move it to a traditional European site.

“The feeling is that, if the entire housing industry in that 5- to 10-mile radius [around Fort Kent] works together with the organizing committee and gets on board and decides they’re going to be part of the solution, then I think this World Cup is viable,” Shepard said. “If, on the other hand, we have some of the business community that decides that they want to stay outside the organizing committee and rent the rooms outside the block, if you will, then this event is in jeopardy.”

The entire region, as far south as Presque Isle, will be examined for hotel possibilities.

Fort Kent’s World Cup budget will be $1.5 million.

Organizers, including 10th Mountain steering committee member Nancy Thibodeau, said they also plan to work with local merchants to find ways to entice the crowds into downtown stores. In 2004 the athletes and other visitors gravitated toward stores that sold electronics and clothing such as Carhartt work pants, she added.

Other issues include changing sections of the 10th Mountain ski course to accommodate more spectators – the final day of the 2004 World Cup there were so many spectators in a center that can accommodate about 5,000 that people were sitting in trees – and making changes to the finish line that would lengthen the final straightaway and make it more of an uphill in the hopes of dramatic, TV-friendly finishes.