The prospect of a Winter Olympics stretching from the Adirondacks to New York City has taken its first formal step toward reality as state leaders launched a year-long review into whether the two destinations could jointly host a future Games.

New York governor Kathy Hochul on Monday announced the formation of the Lake Placid-New York City Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games Exploratory Committee, a statewide group tasked with evaluating whether a future Winter Games built around existing venues and shared between the two locations could be delivered sustainably and responsibly.

The committee’s work is expected to take approximately a year and will culminate in recommendations to state leaders. Officials stressed that the process does not represent a formal Olympic bid. Yet the announcement marks the clearest indication yet that New York is seriously examining a return to the Winter Games, with 2042 emerging as the earliest realistic target after the 2034 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Switzerland is currently the IOC’s preferred pathway for the 2038 Games, leaving 2042 as the first plausible opening for any New York bid.

“The time is now to return the Olympic flame back to New York,” Hochul said. “Milano Cortina showcased the immense possibility that comes with a dual city Olympic Games.”

The proposal reflects a broader shift in how the International Olympic Committee approaches hosting rights. Faced with escalating costs and waning enthusiasm among potential hosts, the IOC has increasingly embraced regional models that rely on existing venues spread across multiple communities rather than concentrating events in a single city.

This year’s Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo offered perhaps the clearest example yet of that approach, with competitions staged across northern Italy and linked by existing infrastructure. For New York, supporters believe that model creates an opportunity that would have seemed implausible only a decade ago.

Olympic scholar Jules Boykoff, a government and politics professor at Pacific University who has written extensively about the Games, said the changing realities of both climate and Olympic hosting have made places such as Lake Placid more attractive candidates than they once were.

“On one hand, Lake Placid is one of a small number of previous Winter Olympics hosts that will likely be climate-reliable to host the Games through 2050 in light of global warming,” Boykoff said. “Plus, the IOC now allows hosts to spread out the Games in the hopes of limiting costs.”

But Boykoff cautioned that significant obstacles remain. Citing research from Oxford University, he noted that every Olympics for which reliable data exists since 1960 has exceeded its budget and said the Games continue to face longstanding concerns around policing, gentrification, environmental claims and governance.

“This bid has a bit of a crumbling-empire-yearning-for-its-glory-days vibe,” he said.

Lake Placid remains one of the most storied sites in Olympic history, having staged the Winter Games in 1932 and 1980. The latter produced one of the defining moments in American sport when the United States men’s hockey team stunned the Soviet Union en route to gold in the Miracle on Ice.

A successful bid would make Lake Placid the first American venue to host the Winter Olympics three times. The US also hosted the Winter Games at Squaw Valley in 1960 and Salt Lake City in 2002.

Advocates argue that Lake Placid is no longer merely trading on nostalgia. New York state says it has invested more than $750m in modernizing the region’s Olympic facilities in recent years, transforming venues that continue to host international competitions and elite training camps.

The upgrades have become significant enough that Lake Placid was last year designated as the contingency sliding venue for the Milan-Cortina Games, underscoring its continuing relevance within the international winter sports landscape.

“Few places can match the combination of Olympic heritage, world-class venues and global reach found in New York State,” said Ashley Walden, president and chief executive of the Olympic Regional Development Authority, who will chair the exploratory committee.

Supporters envision a bid that would combine Lake Placid’s winter sports infrastructure with New York City’s transportation network, hospitality capacity and experience hosting major global events. State officials said the committee would examine whether a Games model built around existing venues, sustainability, fiscal responsibility and community engagement could support broader economic development, tourism and infrastructure goals.

The committee includes representatives from state and local government, business, sport and economic development and will gather public input before delivering its findings. That process is being conducted with the knowledge of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, according to state officials, though the USOPC has not endorsed a future bid.

“Lake Placid holds a special place in the history of the Olympic and Paralympic movement and continues to play an important role in the development of Team USA athletes today,” said Sarah Hirshland, chief executive of the USOPC. “We applaud New York State and ORDA for their ongoing investments in winter sport and for taking a thoughtful, sustainable approach to exploring future opportunities.”

The announcement comes amid an unprecedented run of major international sporting events in the United States.

The US is currently co-hosting the men’s World Cup alongside Canada and Mexico, with the final scheduled for the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area. It will also co-host the women’s World Cup in 2031 with Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica. Los Angeles will host the Summer Olympics in 2028 before the Winter Games return to Salt Lake City in 2034.

Supporters of a New York bid see the proposed Olympics as a continuation of that trend, albeit one built around a distinctly different model that links one of the world’s largest cities with a village of fewer than 3,000 people in the Adirondack mountains.

Assemblymember Robert Carroll, a member of the committee’s leadership group, said the concept offered an opportunity to unite urban and rural communities behind a shared project while leveraging infrastructure that already exists.

The exploratory committee is expected to deliver its findings in about a year, after which state leaders will decide whether New York’s Olympic ambitions advance from an exploratory exercise to a formal bid effort.