Fort Kent adjusts to possible Cup loss Decision on biathlon event pending

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Ever since the town of Fort Kent staged a World Cup biathlon event back in 2004, local organizers have been looking ahead, and eagerly awaiting another World Cup event.

According to the International Biathlon Union’s plan, that second World Cup was to take place in 2009.

And now, it may not.

Recently the IBU announced that it planned to revert to a nine-event World Cup schedule, dropping one event from the present schedule.

And according to Fort Kent organizers, that meant the eighth stop on next year’s circuit – their own event scheduled for March 12-15, 2009 – was in danger of being scrapped.

That decision won’t be made until late May, after a meeting between the IBU and the European Broadcast Union.

On Thursday, the chairwoman of the Fort Kent organizing committee admitted the news of a potential schedule change that included the northern Maine venue was a shock.

“At the end of the season, the teams have an evaluation, an assessment of how the past season went,” Nancy Thibodeau said.

At that meeting, athletes and team officials said the season was too long, and that too much travel was required.

“Their recommendation was to keep Fort Kent in,” Thibodeau said. “After that assessment we really didn’t worry about being cut out of the schedule because they wanted to come to Fort Kent.”

According to a press release from the Maine Winter Sports Center, which hosts the World Cup event, the IBU is unlikely to agree, and will likely drop Fort Kent due to the impact such a move would have on organizing committees at other venues.

That, as you can expect, wasn’t the news Thibodeau and her own organizing committee wanted to hear.

“It was a real let down. It concerns us,” she said. “We’ve already put time and money into this World Cup. We’re excited about hosting the World Cup again, and it was disheartening.”

Fort Kent biathlon events succeed in large part to the amount of volunteer work put in by local organizers.

For instance, Thibodeau said there’s a lot of improvement work going on at the biathlon site, much of it done by volunteers.

“We’ve got some major construction projects this summer, and we’re going forward with them,” Thibodeau said. “I’ve got people up there [at the venue] who are working every single day of the week.”

Much of that work is also being done by volunteers, and has not substantially affected the Fort Kent committee financially.

“I think our budget [for the 2009 World Cup] was going to be about $1 million,” Thibodeau said. “So if you look at our overall budget, there hasn’t been a lot of cash outlay at this point in time. But there has been some.”

Thibodeau said her group estimated the overall economic impact of hosting a World Cup event at $5 million, and said that impact would be felt far from the St. John Valley.

Bus service, for instance, was going to come from Cyr Bus Lines in Old Town. Other resources from southern Maine and beyond were to be used.

“It will have a wider impact than just on the St. John Valley or Fort Kent, Maine,” she said.

Darlene Kelly Dumond, a local business owner who serves on the steering committee for the World Cup in Fort Kent, said the potential loss of the March event upsets plans that organizers have been working on for months.

“I was just totally saddened [to hear that the Fort Kent event might be cut],” Dumond said. “We’ve been working for over a year. We’ve gone beyond just World Cup and had gone into looking into developing an experience in downtown Fort Kent, coming to Fort Kent [and enjoying] everything we have to offer in the St. John Valley … so that when the World Cup came and we had the worldwide media attention, we would have a brand.”

In most U.S. cities, biathlon is a little-known Olympic sport. But in Europe, the sport is much more popular, and events are televised to entire nations of frenzied fans.

Getting the Fort Kent “brand” out in front of all those potential European viewers, Dumond said, was part of the steering committee’s goal.

“We’re known as ‘The Little Town That Could,’ but we’d never be able to afford the kind of attention that the Word Cup would bring us as a worldwide venue,” Dumond said.

Dumond grew up in Allagash and moved back to Fort Kent from southern Maine in 2005.

One of the reasons she bought a local bar and moved back to Aroostook County was because she’d traveled to the 2004 World Cup event, worked at it, and became excited by the potential that it promised.

“When I first moved away from the valley, I’d tell people where I was from and they’d say, ‘Yes, I’ve heard of the Allagash River,'” Dumond said. “In the last four years [since the World Cup was held there], I say, ‘Fort Kent,’ and whether I’m in southern Maine or in Canada or marketing on the Internet, people know where Fort Kent is.”

That original World Cup event helped create that buzz, and made “The Little Town That Could” a bit more familiar to many, Dumond maintains.

The hope among organizers is that if the 2009 event in Fort Kent is scrapped, the World Cup will return in 2011.

“Losing this ’09 event, my only fear is that with something that’s really good, you have to keep it fresh in [people’s] minds,” Dumond said. “[The World Cup] in ’04 was five years out. We were so looking forward to grabbing attention again.”

Dumond pointed out hosting a World Cup event is a positive thing not only for Fort Kent and Aroostook County, but also for the entire state. And losing one will be costly for the entire state.

Still, both Thibodeau and Dumond remain upbeat.

“I’m continuing my work. I don’t have 30 days to lose,” Thibodeau said. “If we don’t get it and we don’t get put on the [2009] schedule, we’re still two years out from our [potential] next World Cup. Nothing we’ve done has been lost. It gives us more time to finish some of the projects that we’re working on.”

Dumond said remaining positive is a trait many in the St. John Valley share.

“In this part of the state, if you fall down, you pick yourself back up, shake yourself off and keep going,” Dumond said. “Our response is, the decision hasn’t been made yet. If that is what happens, we’ll work toward 2011.”

Cabela’s welcomes customers

If you’ve talked with a few outdoors enthusiasts lately, chances are good the topic of Cabela’s new retail store in Scarborough has been discussed.

The store opened to the public Thursday evening, and this weekend promises to be a busy one at the 125,000-square-foot facility.

A Cabela’s tradition is to invite some of the nation’s top sportsmen to join in the celebration when new stores are opened.

To that end, they’ve invited Maine’s own Wayne Bosowicz to take part in this weekend’s festivities.

Bosowicz, who owns Foggy Mountain Guide Service in Sebec, is a renowned bear-hunting guide, and he’ll be on hand to chat with customers about bears, business and the Maine outdoors.

Bosowicz will appear from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. today and Sunday, and welcomes the opportunity to talk with old and new friends alike.

In a related item, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife announced Thursday that it was pleased to partner with Cabela’s in its effort to encourage on-line license purchases.

The DIF&W announced Cabela’s will join the list of MOSES licensing agents, and that all of the state’s Wal-Mart locations are also on board as MOSES agents.

In a press release, Bill Swan, the DIF&W’s director of licensing, said that Wal-Mart stores sell more than 52,000 licenses a year – about 11 percent of the state’s license sales.

Cabela’s, one of the world’s top outdoor outfitters, will likely become another popular licensing spot for hunters and fishermen.

In addition, Cabela’s will participate in the DIF&W’s MOSES prize drawing, and has offered a $2,000 store gift card as a grand prize.

Cabela’s joins Kittery Trading Post and L.L. Bean as grand prize providers in the contest, which rewards lucky license holders for buying their permits through the MOSES system.

jholyoke@bangordailynews.net

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