Lake Placid, New York State

The Village of Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains hosted the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics. It is embeded in beautiful landscape between the Mirror Lake and the Lake Placid Lake. In the United States, the village is remembered as the site of the so-called Miracle on Ice when a group of American college students and amateurs upset the heavily favored Soviet national ice hockey team 4–3 and two days later won the Olympic gold medal.

In Austria, the nearby Whiteface Mountain is well remembered because of the alpine skiing downhill competition. Brave Leonhard Stock won the gold medal! To everybodys surprise, he came out of nowhere and made the most of the harsh conditions and took first place. Although he couldn't win a World Cup race until almost a decade later, the old saying: "Before Stock is down, we cannot give the crown", says it best.