The other 1980 Winter Games

By Michael Dobie | Staff Writer

July 11, 2004

The view from the top of the bobsled run was gorgeous. In the distance were soaring mountains and curving valleys, blanketed in white in the winter, carpeted in green in the summer. Just below was the course itself, with its two graceful curves and its high banks and the skating rink at the bottom. And the prison wall at the end.

The bobsled run was located inside Dannemora, the upstate prison now known as Clinton Correctional Facility, and it was part of an unusual set of prison sports facilities.

Beginning in the 1960s, Dannemora boasted a 300-yard bobsled run, a 10-meter ski jump and an ice skating rink. The prison regularly staged its own Winter Olympics, most notably in 1980 when the real thing took place at nearby Lake Placid.

"I was a rather innovative individual," Tom Condon said with a chuckle. "Sometimes I was criticized for going over the top."

Condon was recreation supervisor at Dannemora from 1968 to 1990. He helped build a permanent ski jump and used his connections as a part-time ski instructor at Whiteface Mountain to get donations of skis and boots. He acquired old bobsleds from teams at a nearby Air Force base. He begged for and borrowed ice skates from local clubs, and bought old skates from garage sales.

"I didn't stay in the mold," said Condon, who coached football, wrestling and track at Plattsburgh High before working at Dannemora. He admitted he had critics.

"Sometimes they would look at the rec department in different jails as coddling to the inmates," Condon said. "I never felt we were because we were keeping them busy. When they'd go to their cells at the end of the day, they'd be tired."

Dannemora had a 16-team basketball league under Condon's supervision, as well as a six-team tackle football league whose all-stars used to play -- and nearly beat -- the varsity team from Plattsburgh State.

"We used to get guys in there who could really play football," Condon said. "When we played the state university team, some coaches would say, 'Tom, I'd love to have your two halfbacks.' "

Dannemora had no accomplished ski jumpers or bobsledders. "Only the crazies" would try the ski jump, Condon said. But plenty of prisoners were willing to strap on a football helmet and climb into a sled.

"They called it a bobsled. It was like a mountain in the yard that just went straight down and right into a wall," said Robert Lloyd, a Wyandanch-based community activist and lay minister who served two years in Dannemora on drug charges in the 1970s. Lloyd said he did the bobsled run twice.

"You've got to be out of your mind. The bobsled ride is cool but when you get to the bottom you only have about five feet to get off that thing and then you go smack into the wall," Lloyd said. "It was like facing death. That thing was crazy."