Mounds of dirt and construction equipment mean changes are coming for the North Elba Show Grounds, shown on Tuesday. (Enterprise photo — Grace McIntyre)

LAKE PLACID — In a community defined by investment in Olympic-level venues, the North Elba Show Grounds, its facilities outdated and in need of repair, present a stark contrast. This year, the Lake Placid Horse Show Association intends to change that.

“The amount of work there — I can’t overestimate, it’s massive,” said Philip Richter, chairman of the LPHS board. “It’s a huge, huge investment that’s being made there.”

The mounds of dirt and construction equipment currently seen at the North Elba Show Grounds are the early signs of major change. In a sweeping modernization of the facilities, another ring will be added and existing rings will be rearranged. New footing, fencing and drainage will be installed, all in time for the 2025 horse shows.

The show grounds are owned by the town of North Elba, which means the town is in charge of maintaining the facilities and utilities, according to Matt St. Louis, the North Elba Park District manager. All decisions regarding renovations at the facilities are made collaboratively between the town and the LPHS, St. Louis said, but ultimately the renovations mainly cater to the organization’s needs.

“For lack of a better term, it’s like a one-trick-pony. It’s really for the horse show and their events,” St. Louis said. “Ninety-percent of it is really guided toward the horse show.”

The majority of the work being done on the new footing, rings and surfaces is being funded by the LPHS itself, Richter said, although the town is collaborating with them on certain aspects of the renovation. The town will also make additional improvements over the next few years.

“(The goal is) to make the Lake Placid Horse Show grounds parallel and commensurate to what Lake Placid has to offer at the Olympic venues,” Richter said. “I would argue that this is an Olympic venue as well since the 1984 and 1988 Olympic teams were selected right there on those grounds.”

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Keeping up with the competition

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Ten years ago, before the horse show season, the footing of the main competition area was replaced at the North Elba Show Grounds. It was a million-dollar-plus investment, all paid for by Lake Placid Horse Show Association board members and sponsors.

“Last year, I was told point blankly by some of the larger stables that if we did not put in the new footing, they would not come back,” then LPHS Board Chairman Richard Feldman told the Lake Placid News in May 2014. “I’ve been in the horse world all my life. It’s not what I do for a living, but my family has a big horse operation in Kentucky, I rode for the United States team, I did everything there was to do, play polo, I was a master of foxhound. So I know the horse game, and they all know me. They’re not lying to me when they say, ‘We’re not coming back.'”

Before the footing was replaced, crews had added various degrees of different kind of sand, granite dust, etc. so that the ground has a cushion when the horses jump.

“So when they come down, the jump of their weight is cushioned in the dirt or the sand,” Feldman explained. “The new footing does that, but it also allows you to run the same show without any slippage on the part of the horse in all weather. So we could get 3 inches of rain, where I can’t run on the grass field, but I can run on all the other new footing fields. So if I had to cancel the grass, I can transfer it now onto the sand. It’s a sand with a material fiber in it. You can see the material when you get close to it.”

The new footing was considered a state-of-the-art improvement at the time.

“Every Olympics, every world-class show in the world, you must have this today,” Feldman said.

However, Richter said that the horse show has not had capital investment for a long time. They are a nonprofit organization asked to compete with for-profit companies that are able to hold shows for weeks on end, sometimes across multiple locations owned by the same organization.

“How do you compete with that?” Richter said. “We didn’t really have the facilities to compete with that and the entries over the last two years reflected a downward trend.”

On top of the competition between venues, clients in equestrian sports are demanding and the competition scene changes rapidly, Richter said. The global show calendar is very full and clients with expensive horses want good footing, facilities and services. Competitors and spectators want higher quality of jumps, more prize money, better catering and VIP lounges. And the list goes on.

“There’s a whole panoply of things that are changing and we have to change with it,” Richter said. “And the only way that we can really do that is by offering a competitive venue.”

Richter said the LPHS started to see a dip in participation in 2019, but that the pandemic accelerated the decline. Competitors flocked to Michigan first, and now the LPHS is competing with shows and facilities in places like Calgary, Germany and Florida.

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Olympic-sized plans

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The LPHS plans to raise the required funds over the next few years and raise the facility to the level of the Olympic venues in Lake Placid. This is not a low-stakes project, according to Richter.

“We want the horse show facility at that same level, and if we don’t do that, there will be no more horse show. People will not come,” he said.

The goal is to finish about 75% of the footing before snow comes this winter, Richter said, which will leave time from April to June to finish the top dressing. With these upgrades, they hope to attract even more Olympic-level athletes. Richter said athletes love coming to Lake Placid — they had around 10 Olympic medalists at the 2023 show — and the LPHS wants the facilities to match the importance the show holds in the town.

“The horse show board is extremely dedicated to making this work,” Richter said. “As one of the biggest revenue drivers to the village of Lake Placid, it’s vital that this show succeeds.”

Eventually, the goal is to become an FEI-rated show. FEI stands for the Federation Equestre Internationale, or International Federation for Equestrian Sports, which is the international governing body of equestrian sports. In Europe, equestrian competitions have point systems that organizations in the U.S. try to obtain, Richter said.

St. Louis said it is important to the town that they are able to continue to host the Lake Placid Horse Show in facilities that meet their needs. The first horse show of the season — Lake Placid Horse Show — starts in late June, running for six days, and is followed by the six-day I Love New York Horse Show.

“Our biggest concern is that we continue to have the horse show. It’s been here forever — longer than I’ve been alive,” St. Louis said. “It’s part of the community. People expect it. People enjoy it.”