Fort Kent won’t get 2009 Cup Event could return for 2011 at MWSC

FORT KENT – Monday was a good news/bad news day for members of the Fort Kent World Cup Organizing Committee and Maine Winter Sports Center.

Fort Kent will not host a 2008-09 World Cup biathlon event in 2009 as originally scheduled, but after a meeting of the International Biathlon Union, IBU President Anders Besseberg did state that the IBU executive board would propose a 2010-2011 calendar that does include Fort Kent.

“I think that’s a very good way to put it,” said Nancy Thibodeau, FKWCOC chairwoman. “Nothing is lost in terms of our work toward hosting a World Cup event. It just says we have to wait longer for it.

“We are all very happy to hear that the IBU is planning to include Fort Kent in the future. It is clear that the problem for this season was truly logistical.”

The IBU decided to revert to a more standard nine-event World Cup calendar in the coming season because biathlon teams indicated a 10-event schedule was too difficult with the World Championships in Korea; a pre-Olympic World Cup in Vancouver, British Columbia; and a World Cup in central Siberia.

Based on experiences from last season, when athletes and coaches had to deal with jet lag and extensive travel, team representatives asked the IBU to cut one event from the schedule.

Although the teams proposed that Fort Kent be left on the schedule, the IBU opted to cut Fort Kent because of the impact on other organizing committees, according to Thibodeau and the MWSC.

“They probably wanted to make the least impact on the overall schedule and overall calendar, so probably taking our event out had the least impact on all the other nine World Cup organizers,” Thibodeau explained. “If you take ours out, you don’t have to change or move any of the others. If we had stayed on, we probably would have had the date of ours changed and others would have, too.”

Thibodeau said her organizing committee estimated the overall economic impact of losing a World Cup event at $5 million. That’s the amount of business and money one of those events generates for the community and state.

“This news was expected, but it is still disappointing,” she said. “I think they also removed an event from the 2009-2010 schedule, so we weren’t the only ones affected.

“I consider us still a major player on the tour, so overall, the news isn’t as bad as it could be.”

The 10th Mountain Center in Fort Kent will replace the World Cup event with the 2009 Festival in Fort Kent, a U.S. Biathlon Championships and North American Cup event in March.