Olympic Cities
Written on January 24, 2014
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With Sochi just around the corner with only 14 days to go we started thinking about previous winter Olympic venues and discovered that 3 of our popular resorts also held the Olympic games:
1924 – In 1921, the International Olympic Committee gave its patronage to a Winter Sports Week to take place in 1924 in Chamonix, France. This event was a great success, attracting 10,004 paying spectators, and was retrospectively named the First Olympic Winter Games.
1928 – These Winter Games were the first to be held in a different nation from the Summer Games of the same year. They also marked the participation of Japanese athletes for the first time. A new event was contested: the skeleton.
1948 – After a 12-year break, caused by World War II, these Games were named the “Games of Renewal”.
1956 – These Games marked the debut of the USSR team, which immediately won more medals than any other nation. Their speed skaters won three of the four events, while their ice hockey team ended Canada’s domination.
Other areas that are part of our main arrival and departure destinations also had the honour of being host:
1960 – When officials became unsure as to whether a skier had missed a gate in the men’s slalom they asked CBS-TV if they could review a videotape of the race. This gave CBS the idea of inventing the now ubiquitous “instant replay”.
1964 – The Innsbruck Games were threatened by a lack of snow. The Austrian army rushed to the rescue, carving out 20,000 blocks of ice from the mountain side and transporting them down to the luge and bobsleigh tracks. They also carried 40,000 cubic metres of snow to the Alpine skiing slopes.
1976 – The 1976 Games had been awarded to Denver, but the people of the state of Colorado voted to prohibit public funds from being used to support the Games. Innsbruck offered to step in and its offer was accepted by the IOC Executive Board. The city had previously hosted the Winter Games 12 years earlier.
1968 – Norway won the most medals, the first time a country other than the USSR had done so. Gender tests for women were introduced, as were doping controls for both men and women. The Grenoble Games were also the first to be broadcast in colour.
1988 – For the first time, the Winter Games extended to 16 days, including three weekends. The Alpine events were expanded from three to five with the inclusion of the super giant slalom and the Alpine combined. Team events were added in Nordic combined and ski jumping.
2010 – Vancouver hosted 17 days of Olympic Games events, with 2566 athletes, 82 participating countries, 10,000 media representatives and 3 billion television viewers worldwide.
For more information on previous and current Olympic events, please visit the Official website of the Olympic Movement! (http://www.olympic.org/)