Trivia on Ice
Compared to the Summer edition, the Winter Olympics are certainly the smaller-scale affair. This is no surprise, as they are newer (the first games were held in 1924, compared to 1896 for the Summer Olympics) and involve fewer nations (this year will feature a record 92 countries; every Summer Olympics since 2004 has had at least 200 competing nations).
The winter games also tend to be quirkier. Instead of running and jumping, we watch people dance on ice, hurtle down sled courses headfirst, and take a break from their ski race to shoot stuff. (Side note: the Summer Olympics has its fair share of quirkiness too — there’s a lot of ping pong and horse jumping that people don’t talk about).
But just because they include curling doesn’t mean the Winter Olympics haven’t provided compelling storylines over the past 94 years. Like any quadrennial sporting event, the Winter Olympics, which kicked off today in PyeongChang, are prime fodder for trivia.
Whether you’re going to a pub quiz, playing the Olympics-themed races on Fleetwit, or just trying to impress your friends at your figure skating viewing party, here are some facts and figures to help you go from toe loop to triple axel.
Host Cities
The United States has hosted the most Winter Olympiads with 4 (France is a close second with 3). It could have been more, since the 1976 winter games were initially offered to Denver, but voters rejected a ballot measure to fund the event. The ’76 games ended up in Innsbruck, Austria, which had hosted in 1964.
With the 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing will become the first city to have hosted both the winter and the summer games.
The Winter and Summer Olympics were held in the same calendar year up until 1992. In 1986 the IOC voted to have the winter and summer games be offset by two years, which took effect with the 1994 Lillehammer games.
Winter and Summer Medalists
American Eddie Eagan is the only person to have won a gold medal in both the Winter and the Summer Olympics in different events. He won a gold in light-heavyweight boxing in the 1920 summer games in Antwerp, and added another gold 12 years later as part of the men’s bobsled team at the 1932 games in Lake Placid.
However, Eagan is not the only person to have won both summer and winter gold. Gillis Grafström from Sweden accomplished the feat as well, but he did it in the same event — figure skating. How’s that? Well, before the advent of the winter games, figure skating was held during the Summer Olympics. Grafström won three consecutive gold medals in figure skating in 1920, 1924, and 1928 but the first one of those was actually during the Summer Olympics.
Hockey!
It’s no surprise that Canada is pretty dominant in hockey, but at the first Winter Olympics they took it to another level. In their three first-round games against Sweden, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland, Canada scored a combined 85 goals, allowing none from their opponents. Canada went on to win gold, scoring 110 goals and only conceding 3. Their high scorer was Harry Watson with 37 goals over 5 games.
A stir was caused when two separate U.S. hockey teams arrived in St. Moritz for the 1948 Olympics. One was sponsored by the American Hockey Association, while the other was from the Amateur Athletic Union (who protested the fact that the AHA players were paid salaries at a time when the Olympics was still strictly for amateurs). The dispute nearly derailed the entire Olympic hockey tournament, but a compromise was reached where the AHA team was allowed to play but wasn’t eligible for a medal. In the end it didn’t much matter since they couldn’t handle Canada and finished outside the top 3.
No discussion of Olympic hockey would be complete without the “Miracle on Ice”, the famous 1980 game between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R. had a longstanding program in which athletes were nominally given regular jobs (like construction worker) but in reality trained full time, essentially making them professional players. They had won gold in 5 of the previous 6 Olympics and were heavily favored to repeat in 1980. The U.S. team, on the other hand, consisted entirely of amateur players, many from Boston University and the University of Minnesota. The two teams faced off in the first game of the medal round. With the U.S.S.R. up 3–2 after the 2nd period, the U.S. scored 2 goals in the final period to complete one of the greatest upsets in sports history. Sportscaster Al Michaels delivered his famous call “Do you believe in miracles?” in the final seconds of the game. The “Miracle on Ice”, however, was not the final word. It was only after the U.S. beat Finland in their second game of the medal round that the Americans clinched the gold.
Terminology
Figure Skating — there are six common jumps in figure skating: Toe loop, Salchow, Loop, Flip, Lutz and Axel. Axels are considered the most difficult. Japanese skater Miki Ando is the only woman to land a quadruple jump in international competition.
Curling — the ice that curling is played on is called a “Sheet,” and the bullseye-looking things at either end are called the “House”. The “Button” is the circle at the center of the “House”. The captain of the curling team is called the “Skip”, and the brooms are actually called “Brushes”. A stone that just touches the outer edge of the house is called a “Biter”. Example, “Nice biter, skip!”
I’m not even going to try snowboarding terms, because that would be a total faceplant.
Medals
Norway is the all-time Winter Olympics medals leader. Because of their “full-time amateur athletes” (see above: “Hockey”), the Soviet Union had a long period of dominance. Despite only participating in 9 Olympiads, the U.S.S.R. has more total medals than Canada.
Unsurprisingly, the winter games tilt heavily toward Europe and North America. The first medal for the continent of Asia was won by the Japanese skier Chiharu Igaya in 1956. It wasn’t until 1992 that an athlete from the southern hemisphere won a medal at the Winter Olympics. That honor goes to Annelise Coberger, a slalom skier from New Zealand.
Odds and Ends
Figure Skater Sonja Henie competed in the first Winter Olympics in 1924 when she was only 11. She finished last. She then went on to win gold in each of the three following Olympic games. Henie parlayed her success into a career as a Hollywood actress, making several hit films in the 30s and 40s, and earning a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Finally, although the events and characters were highly fictionalized, yes Jamaica did field a bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. As shown in the movie Cool Runnings, the Jamaicans had an early exit because of a crash in the qualifying round. They returned for the next 5 Olympiads and had a high finish of 14th in 1994. This year in PyeongChang Jamaica will field a women’s bobsled team for the first time.
