The Winter Olympic Games are a winter multi-sport event held every four years. They feature winter sports held on ice or snow, such as ice skating and skiing.
Each National Olympic Committee (NOC), as with the Summer Olympics, enters athletes to compete against other NOC's athletes for gold, silver, and bronze medals. Fewer nations participate in the Winter Olympics than the Summer Olympics; the most obvious reason for this is sheer geography, as most of the countries near the equator have no access to winter sport training facilities.
The most recent games were held in Turin, Italy in 2006, and the next games will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 2010. On July 4, 2007, the Russian resort of Sochi was chosen to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
The Early Years:
When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established in 1894, one of the sports proposed for the programme was ice skating. However, no skating was conducted at the Olympics until the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, which featured four figure skating events. Ulrich Salchow (10 time World champion) and Madge Syers (first competitive woman figure skater) won the individual titles with ease.
Three years later, Italian count Eugenio Brunetta d'Usseaux proposed that the IOC stage a week with winter sports as part of the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. The organisers opposed this idea, wanting to promote the Nordic Games, a winter sports competition held every four years. However, this same idea was again proposed for the 1916 Games, which were to be held in Berlin. A winter sports week with speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and Nordic skiing was planned, but the 1916 Olympics were cancelled after the outbreak of World War I.
The first Olympics after the war, the 1920 Games in Antwerp, again, featured figure skating, while ice hockey made its Olympic debut. At the IOC Congress held the following year, it was decided that the organisers of the next Olympics (France) would also host a separate "International Winter Sports Week", under patronage of the IOC. This "week" (it actually lasted 11 days) proved to be a great success and in 1925 the IOC decided to create separate Olympic Winter Games, not connected to the Summer Olympics.
It wasn't until 1926 at the 24th IOC Session in Lisbon, that the 1924 events in Chamonix were retroactively designated as the first Winter Olympics. The French town in the Haute-Savoie hosted the Games from January 25 to February 5. These first Olympics attracted more than 200 athletes from 16 nations, competing in 16 events. The first event on the programme was 500 m speed skating won by U.S. athlete Charlie Jewtraw, who thereby became the first Olympic Winter Games champion, though not the first winter Olympic champion, since figure skating and ice hockey were held in 1908 and 1920. Overall, in 1924, Finnish and Norwegian athletes dominated events.
Recent Years:
The 19th Olympic Winter Games were held in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. Prior to the opening of the Games, it was found that Salt Lake organisers had bribed several IOC members in order to be elected. This resulted in a change of the host city election procedures and several IOC members resigned or were punished. Again, the programme was expanded. Skeleton made its return on the Olympic podium after 54 years, while new events were added in biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined and short track speed skating.
The Olympic Games in Salt Lake City were also the first Olympics since September 11, 2001, which meant Olympic games since then required a higher level of security to avoid any terrorist attack. During the opening ceremonies, Dr. Jacques Rogge, presiding over his first Olympics as IOC president, told the athletes of the host country that their nation was overcoming the "horrific tragedy" of that day and the IOC stands united with them in promoting the committee's ideals.
The Salt Lake City Olympics had many stars. Ole Einar Bjørndalen won all four biathlon events, while Samppa Lajunen took all three Nordic combined medals. Croatia's Janica Kostelić won four medals in alpine skiing, of which three were gold. Simon Ammann won both individual ski jumping events, while Georg Hackl won his fifth consecutive medal in the same event (luge singles), a feat never before achieved by any Olympian. In speed skating, the high altitude of the skating rink assured several new world records. Jochem Uytdehaage broke three world records, winning two golds and a silver; Claudia Pechstein won the 5000 m for the third time in a row, while also winning the 3000 m. The women's short track speed skating events saw China win its first two Winter Olympic golds, both by Yang Yang (A). Canadians jubilated as both their men's and their women's hockey teams defeated the United States to win the gold; the men's team thus ended a gold medal drought that had lasted 50 years to the day.
The United Kingdom won their first Winter Olympic gold medal since 1984; the ladies Curling team springing a surprise result by beating the highly favoured Swiss in the gold medal match.
The men's 1000 m short track event saw one of the unlikeliest results in sports history. Australian Steven Bradbury, who would have been eliminated in the quarterfinals but for the disqualification of Marc Gagnon, advanced to the final when three of the four other competitors in his semifinal crashed out on the final lap. In the final, Bradbury was fifth going into the final lap, when another collision left him the last man standing. Bradbury was able to avoid the pileup, becoming the first Winter Olympic gold medallist from the Southern Hemisphere. Many Australians saw this as a painfully humorous example of the country's struggle for competitiveness in winter sports, being that it took for all other competitors to crash for an Aussie to win. The phrase "to do a Bradbury" has since entered the Australian lexicon meaning to succeed through the failure of others. Alisa Camplin won Australia's second gold medal in freestyle skiing without the need for such incredible luck.
A major scandal evolved around the pair figure skating contest. Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier initially placed second. However, it was decided that a French jury member had favoured the winning Russian pair, and the IOC and the International Skating Union decided to award both pairs the gold medal, after much discussion. Combined with several other referee decisions that came out negatively for Russian athletes, there was a brief threat by the Russians of withdrawing from the Games.
The scandal also resulted in a change to the scoring system used for figure skating events. Previously each judge posted their mark and an average score was taken. The new regulations keep individual judges decisions secret. Also the highest and lowest scores for each competitor is dropped, in the hopes that this will eliminate any sort of bias by judges.
The Future:
In a 2003 IOC vote, the 2010 Winter Olympics were awarded to Vancouver, thus allowing Canada to host its second Winter Olympics as well as being the first for the province of British Columbia. Vancouver will be the largest city to host a Winter Olympics, with a population of more than 2.4 million people in the greater Vancouver metropolitan area.
The host city for 2014 was narrowed down to three cities, on June 22, 2006, and the final decision for the 2014 Winter Olympics was made on July 4, 2007 in Guatemala City when Sochi, Russia was elected as the host city over the other two finalists: Salzburg, Austria and PyeongChang, Republic of Korea. PyeongChang lost by four votes.
As evidenced by the growing audience worldwide and increasing rights fees, the Winter Olympic games are gaining in popularity within countries that do not have a strong winter sports tradition (such as Brazil or Mexico). As a result of its global appeal, it seems likely that international participation in the Winter Olympics will also increase.
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