Article and photos provided by the Adirondack Daily Enterprise

CONGRATS to NYSEF Nordic alumn, Lowell Bailey, for being inducted into the 2018 Lake Placid Hall of Fame!

Lowell Bailey was born in North Carolina, moved to Old Forge at age 3 and then moved to Lake Placid in 1991 when he was 10 years old. For nearly two decades he trained in Lake Placid as a biathlete. It brought him to four Olympics, 11 World Championships and a gold medal at the 2017 World Championships in Austria.

He said he couldn’t have done it without community support.

“It’s a incredible honor; that goes without saying,” he said of the Hall of Fame induction. “It means so much to me to have a community like Lake Placid that I’ve called home for so many years. People there worked tirelessly on things like bringing the Olympics and Ironman [triathlon] to town and making Lake Placid a truly unique place. It’s special to me to share that honor “

While Bailey is well known for his skiing and shooting, he’s also an avid guitar and mandolin player, having earned his chops in his father’s band and later performing in groups such as Big Slide and Swimming with Champy — a reference to the Loch Ness Monster-styled myth of Lake Champlain.

“You never want to say the band’s broken up because you never know when the next reunion will be,” he said.

Bailey and his wife Erika (who also grew up in Lake Placid) recently moved to Bozeman, Montana, where he took a job running the Crosscut Mountain Sports Center, which has a focus on biathlon.

“I don’t know how to put it,” he said, “but I guess it’s bittersweet to be inducted into the year’s hall of fame and have it coincide with my move. It might seem for many that we’re deserting Lake Placid, and some days it doesn’t, but it will always be the place I call home. We’re 1,000 miles away, but we’ll be back frequently.”