Students learned over the spring and summer that the 2022-23 school year would be different: the traditional December holiday break will continue almost through the end of January. This drastic change is due to the FISU Winter Games coming to Lake Placid.
What is FISU? FISU stands for Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire (International University Sports Federation). It is an organization hosting sporting and educational events for university students. FISU was founded in 1949 led by Dr. Paul Schleimer from Luxembourg. In total, FISU events include over 60 sports and students, between 17 and 25, from more than 150 countries. Biannually, FISU organizes summer and winter sporting competitions called the FISU World University Games in different cities. Lake Placid is extremely fortunate and will be hosting the Winter World University Games in January of 2023.
The World University Games began far before the creation of FISU, with the first event taking place in Paris, 1923. The games were hosted every 2 years by the International Confederation of Students (ICS), founded in 1919 and led by Jean Petitjean. This would continue until 1939, when it was interrupted by the beginning of World War II.
After the war, ICS, now the International Union of Students (IUS), wanted to host the games once again. However, conflict was raised as a result of the IUS wanting to use the World University Games to spread propaganda. This led to the splitting into FISU and IUS in 1949. By 1959, both FISU and the ICS agreed to participate in the Universiade in Turin, which featured 1,407 athletes from 43 countries, all students.
As of 2021, FISU has hosted 30 summer and 29 winter Universiade events, with the highest registered students being 11,759 from 159 countries during the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan, Russia.
Returning to the present, the Lake Placid 2023 FISU World University Games will take place on the 12th of January until the 22nd. The last time FISU was hosted in North America was in 1993, in Buffalo. This will also be the first FISU Winter Games to take place in a city that has already hosted the event (Lake Placid, 1972).
Twelve sports will be featured in this event: alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle and freeski, ice hockey, nordic combined, short track speed skating, ski jumping, snowboard, and speed skating.
