Editor’s note: This post was recently received from an undisclosed email address. If you are new to the site and are wondering what the hell we are talking about, please see first here and then here (also, welcome). This should resolve all ambiguities. Oh, also the blurry header photo shows, in the background, a very small portion of the people waiting for a ride today. Can’t really make out what is going on, and don’t see any buses there? Neither does ORDA.
By The Index
LAKE PLACID — The Index is deep undercover at the Lake Placid World Cup. Or the Stifel World Cup or whatever it’s called. You will never find The Index so don’t bother trying.
However, The Index witnessed the season’s biggest collapse. Yes, bigger than Klæbo at the Olympics. Yes, bigger than Jessie’s honks of agony post–Olympic skiathlon. Sometimes supporters of The Index write in to complain about our lack of historical coverage of notable collapses such as Northug or Dæhlie. Well, today’s collapse was more spectacular than any of those. In fact, it was such a collapse it changed the entire face of the weekend. Spectators were literally so distraught by this collapse they were unable to even watch the racing.
Who was it? What did they do? Just to keep you in suspense, let’s go to the scores first. In our typical fashion we will go in order: drama, duration, help, bonus.
Drama: 8 points
The shock value alone was worth the high score here. No one expected the Lake Placid organizers to collapse. To so thoroughly botch the transportation was an unprecedented feat. The Index loves a surprise, and the organizers certainly delivered. Those spectators who fled the scene? They literally couldn’t even get to the race. The organizers collapsed so hard they sent would-be spectators in the opposite direction.
How many shuttles would you, our readers, expect would be required to move thousands of people? One might presume that number is greater than the approximately 10 (being charitable) that the organizers hired.
Let’s say you had three sites from which to fetch spectators, with ~85% of spectators at one site. Would you set up a shuttle run that hit all three sites each route? Or would you route, say, 85% of your shuttle capacity to the site that had 85% of the demand? Surely you would not want 100% your buses to do approximately 60% of the shuttle route time with only 15% of their seats taken, would you?
(Some readers may be wondering… wait, there are three sites? Yes, there are three sites. One is just not written down anywhere, but it is part of the route. This means each loop has 7–10 minutes of drive time spent to pick up or deposit just a few people. Generally in logistics, secrets are not preferred, but the Lake Placid organizers feel differently.)
At the end of the day, when people wish to leave the shuttle lot (an inevitability given how cars work), do you think there might be traffic exiting the lot? In such a case, would you prefer to have your shuttles wait in traffic, or should they have an expedited exit path to save 5–10 minutes per loop?
Would you, perhaps, brief the shuttle drivers on their duties prior to the morning of the big event? Or would you tell them that very morning where to go, with no GPS or directions in the buses?
Would you contract with your bus drivers to stop their day at 6 p.m. when there were still hundreds of people waiting for shuttle rides back to their origin point?
This may seem obvious to some of you, but trust The Index that the Lake Placid organizers do not feel the same way. Thus the drama score of 8. The Index conducted numerous interviews and gathered the crowd vibes, which were… bad.
Duration: 120 points
As you know, The Index awards duration points by the minute, where one point = one minute. The organizers collapsed so hard that The Index was down for the count for 120 minutes to leave the venue.
We’ve never seen anything like this before, folks. The longest duration in Index history is a 2.5, and even that has only ever occurred twice, both last season. Joensuu in the Trondheim team sprint, and Deyanov after the Lillehammer 10km freestyle. The Lake Placid organizers just put up a score that beat the previous best by a factor of 48. And even this is charitable! The transportation was truly collapsed all day, so The Index could easily award them a 480, but we’re very nice.
Help: -8 points
Help points are awarded to every person who helps the collapsed athlete recover from their collapse. The Index counted eight New York State Troopers chilling in their cars doing absolutely nothing to direct traffic at intersections where traffic direction would have been quite helpful.
Negative help points have never been awarded before, and you might wonder about this. How could The Index award negative points? Many times athletes ski right past a collapsed colleague in the finish zone and they don’t receive negative points. So why would the police? Well, let The Index know when World Cup racers take taxpayer money to help collapsed athletes and we’ll start awarding negative points to racers. You’ve undoubtedly heard the acronym “ACAB.” Well, that’s true. And in this case, it also means All Collapses Are Beautiful.
Bonus: 0 points
You think The Index is just giving away points for no reason, don’t you? Wrong. Unjustified point scoring is against our religion, so no bonus awarded.
The Index looks forward to other journalists investigating this collapse in further detail. Who from the ORDA was responsible? Do they have a full and complete brain? Can they count or do arithmetic? Have they ever been transported to any place before?
Just as The Index provides coaching advice to athletes, we also provide logistical support to failing government organizations. You know where to find us.
The Index
Update from Saturday:
The Index would like to note that, just as World Cup athletes take our collapse coaching wisdom, the Lake Placid organizers did as well. Transportation was much improved on day two. Zero drama, zero duration, and a reasonable amount of help from the state police gets the help score back to zero. In other words, not a collapse.
As the last spectators to depart were milling around (after some 2 hours) waiting for shuttle busses one hit a shed, breaking a window, and was out of commission. After that the remaining fans cheered every bus that did not hit the shed.
I do not believe anyone was injured in the shed crash.
holy shit I laughed harder at this than I should have
I ran 2.4 miles from the venue, in jeans, redwings, and a long coat halfway back to the equestrian parking lot. At 2.4 miles a car filled with Bostonians offered me a ride the remainder of the way. When they pulled off after the entrance to the parking to drop me we were chased by a Trooper yelling we couldn’t pull off there and running after the car. I never got to thank them properly for the lift because I was basically jumping out of the car while it was still moving. I have the strava data to back this up.
I somehow got lucky and followed a sign to the unknown parking lot. Easily got on a bus and was dropped off. People at the horseshow grounds who arrived at parking an hour before I did got to the venue more than an hour after me. The long walking path with no drop off closer for those that might not be able to walk half a mile in deep slush (shovels?) was also an issue. And the ticket info clearly said no outside food or drink, but there was none available near the racing either. Complete event details fail. But fabulous to see the races.
So it was a disaster. Where’s the ‘insight?’
OK, I did not attend the 1980 Olympics but I am old enough to have heard the shuttle-bus horror stories from that event. I thought, “of course they will have it figured out from 46 years ago,” but I was wary, so I got to the horse show parking area very early and arrived at the venue almost too early.
I had been warned of the long walk (and that was OK for me) but kind of shocked that a facility with so many Pisten Bullys (plus plow trucks, etc) could not figure out how to plow out away the calf-deep sugar snow. I have to believe that the sugar snow kept attendees from making use of the well-hidden food trucks. (I had brought a sandwich and water.)
During the day I heard about the long (2 hour) lines to get on a shuttle, and knowing I had a long drive back to eastern NH I made the choice to leave at the start of the men’s race – a hard trade-off. I encountered hundreds of people who were just arriving; if they were lucky they saw the 2nd half of the men’s race.
One positive: at the security check through they took a folding knife that was in my pocket, but they labeled it and put it in a plastic tub and I was able to retrieve it on my way out. I should have realized they would have this type of security and left it in my car, but it was nice that they did not go all TSA on me.