FIRST WINTER OLYMPICS

With the Winter Olympics coming up I thought that this bit of historical background was appropriate.........Enjoy the games.................PEACE................Scott

January 25, 1924

On January 25, 1924, the first Winter Olympics take off in style at Chamonix in
the French Alps. Spectators were thrilled by the ski jump and bobsled as well as
12 other events involving a total of six sports. The "International Winter
Sports Week," as it was known, was a great success, and in 1928 the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially designated the Winter Games,
staged in St. Moritz, Switzerland, as the second Winter Olympics.Five years
after the birth of the modern Olympics in 1896, the first organized
international competition involving winter sports was staged in Sweden. Called
the Nordic Games, only Scandinavian countries competed. Like the Olympics, it
was staged thereon every four years but always in Sweden. In 1908, figure
skating made its way into the Summer Olympics in London, though it was not
actually held until October, some three months after the other events were
over.In 1911, the IOC proposed the staging of a separate winter competition for
the 1912 Stockholm Games, but Sweden, wanting to protect the popularity of the
Nordic Games, declined. Germany planned a Winter Olympics to precede the 1916
Berlin Summer Games, but World War I forced the cancellation of both. At the
1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, ice hockey joined figure skating as an
official Olympic event, and Canada took home the first of many hockey gold
medals. Soon after, an agreement was reached with Scandinavians to stage the
IOC-sanctioned International Winter Sports Week. It was so popular among the 16
participating nations that, in 1925, the IOC formally created the Winter
Olympics, retroactively making Chamonix the first.In Chamonix, Scandinavians
dominated the speed rinks and slopes, and Norway won the unofficial team
competition with 17 medals. The United States came in third, winning its only
gold medal with Charles Jewtraw's victory in the 500-meter speed-skating event.
Canada won another hockey gold, scoring 110 goals and allowing just three goals
in five games. Of the nearly 300 athletes, only 13 were women, and they only
competed in the figure-skating events. Austrian Helene Engelmann won the pairs
competition with Alfred Berger, and Austrian Herma Planck Szabo won the women's
singles. The Olympics offered a particular boost to skiing, a sport that would
make enormous strides within the next decade. At Chamonix, Norway won all but
one of the nine skiing medals.