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Village thanks snowshoe race volunteers

Athletes praise organizers for a successful event

Saranac Lake Mayor Clyde Rabideau, right, presents Dewey Mountain Recreation Center Manager Jason Smith with a gold medal for leading the volunteer effort to ready Dewey’s trails for Saturday’s World Snowshoe Championships. (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

SARANAC LAKE — The village saved a World Snowshoe Championships gold medal for the man who led the effort to save the race course for the event.

Mayor Clyde Rabideau presented Dewey Mountain Recreation Center Manager Jason Smith with a gold medal at Monday’s village Board of Trustees meeting. Smith organized volunteers to chisel drainage ditches through the ice and shovel snow onto the cross-country ski trails at Dewey in the days and hours before the races.

“The community came together,” Rabideau said. “Fifty to 100 people converged on Dewey Mountain over two days with shovels and pick axes and plastic sleds, and they hauled snow over a four-kilometer course, and they made a world class race course out of Dewey Mountain. It was magical, it was a miracle, and it really showed what Saranac Lake is all about.”

Organizers originally planned to host the World Snowshoe Championships on a course that started in front of the Harrietstown Town Hall, went to Dewey Mountain and returned to finish in Riverside Park. But a week of warm weather and the threat of heavy rain on Saturday led to the decision, two days beforehand, to move the races entirely to Dewey Mountain.

The mayor offered “thanks and admiration” to Smith, saying he was “cool, calm and collected” in making the event happen at Dewey, despite the challenging conditions.

“You just put your head down and charged ahead,” he said. “You had a lot of great people. We put it on Facebook. We got it out to the media. People just showed up and went right to work.

“What you did was a gold medal performance, and I think you deserve a gold medal.”

Smith accepted the recognition on behalf of the volunteers who stepped up to help out.

“It wasn’t just me,” he said. “It was everybody who came out and threw snow on the trail. It was a team effort. I knew that was going to put us over the top and make it happen.”

“A lot of people from around the world didn’t think we could pull it off, but we did pull it off,” Rabideau said.

The mayor noted that more than 450 people had registered for all the races, — the 8-kilometer race, a 4-kilometer Junior World Championships, and the 4-kilometer Shoe-Be-Doo Walk/Run. Although the total number of people who competed was 407, according to the race results, it’s still double the number of entrants of any prior World Snowshoe Championships.

“It was a phenomenal success,” Rabideau said. “We’re getting emails and Facebook messages throughout the day from people who were very impressed with Saranac Lake.”

In a review posted on the World Snowshoe Championships Facebook page, Oscar Sebrango Bedoya of Spain congratulated organizers for what he called an “incredible” event.

“We had so much fun and we felt so welcome from the very beginning,” Bedoya wrote. “All of you guys will be so welcome in the Spain (World Championships) next year!”

“Thank you everyone who organized this event,” wrote Catherine Foskett of Quebec. “It was very well run and everyone in Saranac Lake was so welcoming to us. Thanks for your hospitality. We will be back!”

World Snowshoe Federation board member Marcy Schwam said she’s been to many of these events before, “and Saranac Lake is going to be a tough one to beat.

“As an athlete, a member of the WSSF, and just a person, every detail was put in place to make this event and weekend a memorable experience,” Schwam wrote. “I know many of the participants and all of them felt the same way. The weather didn’t tarnish the camaraderie or competition, and if anything it made it stronger.”

Rabideau posted a thank-you note to the event’s participants on the Facebook page. He also invited them back next year to take part in a “Shoe-Be-Doo” snowshoe race in Saranac Lake that’s tentatively scheduled for Feb. 24, 2018.

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