Thursday, January 20
Lake Placid to host games
 
 In 2000, ESPN will create and debut a first-of-its kind event, The ESPN Great Outdoor Games. The ESPN Great Outdoor Games will feature competition among the best in the world in five sports and 17 events for nearly $300,000 in prize money. The four-day event featuring fishing, timber events, shooting, and sporting dogs will be held in Lake Placid, N.Y. and will total 17 hours of original programming in July and August on ESPN and ESPN2.

  ESPN Great Outdoor Gamebook

"Participation in outdoor activities has hit record numbers and we're confident we can make this a tremendous event," said Steve Bornstein, ESPN chairman and president, ABC Sports. "We are very encouraged by the early response from potential participants and advertisers and will use the successful model of our X Games franchise to create another first-class, proprietary property."

Great Outdoors Games
New York Governor George E. Pataki said, "Lake Placid is the perfect setting for ESPN to hold the inaugural Great Outdoor Games. Now, through ESPN's coverage, people across the world will see first hand what New Yorkers have known for decades: Lake Placid is one of the truly breathtaking sites in America. By bringing the finest outdoor competitors to Lake Placid, we're creating another opportunity to draw thousands of spectators into the North Country, and I'm confident that once they see all the North Country has to offer, they'll want to come back again and again."

The five sport categories and 17 sport disciplines to be featured at the inaugural ESPN Great Outdoor Games will be:

Fishing

  • Bass Fishing
  • Fly Casting (distance/accuracy)
  • One-Fly (fly fishing competition with participants limited to using one fly all day with no replacement)

    Timber Events
  • Australian Springboard (timed event as participants chop into vertical pole, place block into pole and climb)
  • Men's/Women's Chopping Endurance (timed event)
  • Hot Saw (timed chain sawing)
  • Men's and Women's Hard Hit (fewest axe hits to cut through a log)
  • Speed Climbing (head-to-head bracketed event)
  • Team Relay (three-person teams with men and women, compete in five chopping/sawing events)
  • Men's and Women's Run, Roll and Drive

    Shooting
  • Grid system/target shotgun competition
  • Grid system/target rifle competition
  • Trick Shots

    Archery
  • Grid system/target competition
  • Trick Shots

    Sporting Dogs
  • Open Breed Division to include agility (obstacle course), relay race and "Big Air Dogs" (long jump into lake)
  • Retriever Trials

    ESPN will work with outdoor organizations and ESPN program suppliers to organize the competitions, which will include qualifying events. JM Associates of Little Rock, Ark., producer of The Fishin' Hole (the network's longest-running outdoor show) and other programming, and Lingner Group Productions of Indianapolis, producer of a wide variety of live and taped events for ESPN and other networks, will provide production services to ESPN for the event.

    ESPN Outdoors, a Saturday morning block of programming (7 - 10:30 a.m.), has been a staple on ESPN since 1981. ESPN2 televises 14 hours of outdoors programming each week, including a four-hour block on Sunday mornings.

    Other ESPN-owned events are: the ESPY Awards, X Games, Winter X Games, Skins Games (plus Senior Skins and Women's Skins Games) and four college basketball events, the Great Eight Festival, Jimmy V Classic, the Atlantic 10-Conference USA Challenge and the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

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