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The history of the Winter Olympics is a shaky one indeed. As early as 1894 when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established, ice skating was proposed for the Olympic program. In spite of this, it was not until 1908, fourteen years later, that an ice-skating event was held at the Summer Olympics in London. This first Olympic figure skating event was won with little difficulty by the Swedish champion Ulrich Salchow, the skater who invented the backwards one revolution jump that bears his name, and Madge Syers of Britain. The German competitors, Anna Hubler and Heinrich Berger, won the pairs event.

Although the 1908 figure skating proved itself popular, the development of the Winter Olympics was held back by the olympic organizers when they turned down a proposal from Count Eugenio Brunetta d’Usseaux, an Italian, to stage a week of winter sports during the 1912 Summer Olympics, which ironically were held in Stockholm. Focus was instead placed on the Nordic Games, a quadrannial winter sports championship exclusive to competitors from the nordic countries.

Another major setback to the establishment of the Winter Olympics came in what would have been the 1916 Olympics in Germany. A week in the Black Forest devoted entirely to winter sports and publicized as a “Skiing Olympia” to feature figure skating, speed skating, ice hockey, and Nordic skiing, was cancelled along with the rest of the Olympics due to the First World War.

It was not until the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp that winter sports made another Olympic appearance in the form of figure skating. Ice hockey at this time also made an Olympic debut. Gillis Grafstrom of Sweden, along with Magda Julin, won the individual honors. The top pair was Walter Jakobsson and Ludovika. It was Canada that swept the gold medal in their victory over the United States. Czechoslovakia’s team took the bronze.

The following year the IOC held a congress where it was decided that the 1924 Olympics scheduled in France would include an International Winter Sports Week featuring figure skating, speed skating, ice hockey, Nordic skiing, and even bobsledding. Despite objections from Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the Modern Olympics, and from the Scandinavian countries who from 1901-1926 staged the Nordic Games in Sweden every four years, the International Winter Sports Week took place in the town of Chamonix, in the Haute-Sacoie area of the French Alps, just an hour northeast of Grenoble. The events ran from January 25 to February 5 and featured over 258 athletes from 16 different countries competing in 16 events. At long last winter sports stepped unhindered to the international stage, and this time the fates were not against them.

The sixteen countries competing in the Winter Olympics, like most Summer Olympic participants at this time, were European and North American, including Belgium, France, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, The United States, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, and Norway among the medal recipients. As one would suspect, the Nordic countries steamrolled the competition. Norway and Finland alone went home with 27 of the 43 medals up for grabs, mostly from the Nordic events and speed skating races. Three gold medals were won by Finland’s Clas Thunberg and Thorleif Haug, a Norwegian Nordic skier and jumper. There were also two other memorable medals awarded through these games. The first was a gold given to American speed skater Charles Jewtraw in an upset victory in the 500 meter competition. This win was particularly dramatic since the event was the first of the International Winter Sports Week, thus making Charles Jewtraw the first Winter Olympics gold medal champion. The other medal, a bronze in the ski jump, was the very last medal to be awarded from these games. Due to a scoring error, American Anders Haugen did not receive his prize until 1974 at the age of 83.

It was also at this International Winter Sports Week where Canada solidified its reputation as perennial champions of the ice-hockey ring. In their first four games they defeated Switzerland 33-0 before moving on to an almost embarrasing 30-0 victory over Czhechoslovakia. Sweden and Great Britain were likewise swept away at 22-0 and 19-2 respectively before the Canadians defeated the United States with a respectable 6-1 lead.

So popular and exciting were the events and competitors at this eleven-day International Winter Sports Week that any doubts the IOC had about establishing a separate Winter Olympic Games were erased. At their 1925 congress the IOC decided to establish the Winter Olympics as its own institution separate from the summer games. One year later, in 1926, the Marquis de Polignac proposed that the IOC designate the 1924 Olympics “International Winter Sports Week” as the very first Winter Olympic Games. Once again Baron Pierre de Coubertin, also a Frenchman, was opposed to the idea, but once again he was defeated. Siding with the Baron, the IOC agreed to retroactively designate the winter games in Chamonix the very first Winter Olympics.

This decision had of course as much to do with the rising popularity of winter sports at the time as it did to the fact that winter sports, by their very nature, require specific environmental conditions. In separating the Winter Olympics from their summertime counterparts, the IOC made the Olympics accessible to those winter sports taking place outside of the ring, i.e. the various iterations of skiing, bobsledding, and more recently, snowboarding.

The establishment of the Winter Olympics brought the IOC much praise, and the popularity of winter sports continued to rise. The Winter Olympic Games were finally formally established in 1928, and were thereafter held every four years, barring the hiatus imposed by World War II. In 1994 the Winter Olympics were moved so that the Summer and Winter Olympics would fall two years apart from each other. The 2006 Winter Olympics are to be held in Turin, Italy, from February 10 through February 26 where 85 nations will compete in 85 Winter Olympics events, a dramatic growth from humble origins.

www.winterolympichistory.com