Biathlon organizers basking in successof local event
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — Though it’s been a month since the Star City successfully hosted E.ON IBU World Cup Biathlon races, Presque Isle officials are still receiving positive comments about the event, which is expected to have boosted the local economy.
“We don’t have any hard numbers yet for economic development,” said Jane Towle, who served as chief of media and promotion for the Nordic Heritage Sport Club, “but I know that Northern Maine Development Commission/Maine Tourism is planning to do an economic impact report. They use a lot of different data such as sales tax reports from Maine Revenue Services … what did the area collect in sales tax … and they compare that with the same time frame a year or two ago to see what kind of an impact the time of the World Cup created.”
Towle said the economic change can be measured both short- and long-term.
“There’s an immediate impact that includes the dollars spent directly related to the World Cup,” she said. “That includes the dollar amount spent by the Organizing Committee, as well, which spent a tremendous amount of money in the community with vendors, people who had to do the construction project, with hotels and restaurants, and more. There’s also money spent by the individual visitors that came into the area. The short-term impact can be $3 million-$4 million.
“The long-term effects is the exposure that Aroostook County is going to get from the Europeans on this,” said Towle. “It could trigger a large business over in Europe who may be looking to expand over in the United States. There would be 50 states vying for this, but all of a sudden, we have this little niche market called biathlon that somebody might look at from northern Europe where they have a fan base that’s so huge that would say, ‘Wow! Here’s something where we can have a direct contact with biathlon, let’s look at this area.’”
While the short-term effect can be very good, she said the long-term could be even better.
“We’ve always looked at our long, cold, dreary winters as a detriment; now it could be our biggest asset. The biathlon can be an economic driver for our region,” said Towle. “It happens in Europe, and there’s no reason it can’t happen in Presque Isle.”
Towle said local restaurants and hotels saw an increase in business.
“Having to be onsite during the event I wasn’t out in the restaurant scene myself, but I did hear that there were lines out the door at not only places in Presque Isle, but the surrounding communities, too,” she said. “Even more local people were anxious to eat out after having spent a fun day watching the competitions.
“I know the Aroostook Centre Mall was very, very busy. Our transportation system made stops at the mall, as well. I also heard that certain electronic devices were sold out in town, and the hotels and motels in the area were booked nearly to capacity and enjoyed a very healthy week,” said Towle. “Everyone was very pleased with how well things went during the Presque Isle stop on the North American tour.”
Towle said the Organizing Committee recently received the IBU’s after-action report, which essentially serves as a scorecard for the event.
“We had wonderful reviews,” she said. “It came directly from the technical director for IBU, and it was all above average; if they had one complaint, it was that there were too many volunteers.
“We don’t have an expansive range area. Where the range is located on World Cup standards is very tight; it’s perfectly adequate, but it’s not expansive like other areas are for photographers and range volunteers,” said Towle. “For the number of volunteers that we had, that area was a little bit tight and we could probably do with a few less people in that area. That was the only ‘negative’ point coming from the report.”
Towle said, however, the Organizing Committee believes they had “exactly the right amount of volunteers.”
“Because this was our first World Cup,” she said, “we needed all hands on deck. We’ll need the same amount of volunteers next time, too. We will be on the docket in the future. It’s pretty much a given that we will host another biathlon event down the road.
“We now know after reviewing the report how we could run things more efficiently and that always comes with experience,” said Towle. “For example, we could probably make transportation more efficient. We had an excellent transportation plan, but it was very extensive; we could probably try to be a little more efficient in that regard. Food services was above and beyond, but we could probably be a little more efficient with that too. All of these things exceeded expectations. Do we need to exceed expectations? We’d love to, but we also want to watch the bottom dollar, as well.”
Local officials are still hearing stories from Europe involving local students.
“German television did a story about the school kids and the programs that they did, and that made a really big impact in Europe. It’s very exciting to think that our school kids and interviews that went on at Presque Isle Middle School were being watched by a record-breaking 120 million Europeans during primetime TV,” said Towle. “Television crews talked to the students about how this region felt to host its first World Cup event and how the kids got involved and how exciting it was for them to learn about the athletes and the countries they were from.”
Towle said organizers are “thrilled” with how well the Feb. 4-6 Presque Isle event went.
“It took the work of a lot of people to pull this together. I’ve always said our volunteer force is second-to-none and they really proved it this time,” she said. “It was a mystery to the European biathlon community how we could ever pull this off, but they’ve come and witnessed it for themselves. It had never been done in Europe in such a short period of time, and we did it and did it with finesse.”
