New York prison was Winter Olympic venue and athletes practically lived in cells
When Lake Placid, in the State of New York, landed the chance to host the 1980 Winter Olympics, organisers began to scramble for funding for the showpiece.
They found it after convincing the federal government to allocate $28 million (£21million) for the construction of the Olympic village.
However, there was one condition – the village would need a practical use after the games.
And while this proved to be a sticking point for a while, Robert McEwen had a radical idea of giving it a second life as a prison.
The plan was accepted, the funding was secured, and construction began.
“No one had thought about a prison," Norman Carlson, then the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, later admitted.
He added: “I certainly hadn’t.”
But McEwen, and John Slack, had approached Carlson with the idea, and he admitted the more he thought about the scenario the more it made sense.
The village needed to be secure, particularly after the horrific events of the 1972 Summer Olympics, and so did the prison that would stand there afterwards.
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While the organisers were happy with the decision, the athletes certainly weren't.
Sports Illustrated reported, in 1979, that a growing number of teams were refusing to be 'incarcerated' in the facility that was being built.
While it bore the Olympic logo, the construction focused around the facility's long term future as a jail.
Athletes were ultimately housed in 10×10 foot rooms with bunk beds and steel doors – the lucky one's had a window eight feet up the wall.
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1,072 athletes from 37 countries descended on the facility for the two-week event in February 1980.
After 38 events in six sports over ten disciplines, the Soviet Union topped the medal table ahead of East Germany and the USA.
The games ended on February 24, and a couple of months later FCI Ray Brook was opened as detainees entered the medium-level security prison.
FCI Ray Brook is still in operation today.
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It might have been the legacy of the games had the USA men's Ice Hockey team pulled off one of the great Olympic upsets.
Dubbed the 'Miracle on Ice', the US side – comprised of exclusively college athletes – took on the Soviet side, who were all but professionals.
The Soviets had swept up every Olympic Ice Hockey title since 1964, and the two sides met in the final with Cold War tensions at their boiling point.
The American side unbelievably pulled off a 4-3 win.
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