A quick tour through History of Winter Games 2018 before it starts today

NewsBharati    09-Feb-2018
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Mumbai, February 9: From Friday the much-awaited sports event, the first major one of the year is starting. Peyongchang, the host of Winter Olympics 2018, the 23rd edition, is all set to begin. Before the game starts, let’s have a quick tour through the history of Winter Olympics.

The first Olympic Winter Games was held in Chamonix, France, in 1924 and the last one was celebrated in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. In 1901, the first ever event of winter sports was staged in Sweden. But somehow deeming it as Nordic games, only Scandinavian countries competed. After almost a decade the International Olympic Committee (IOC) proposed the staging of a separate winter competition for the 1912 Stockholm Games but Sweden did not accept it. Then another attempt was taken by Germany to precede the 1916 Berlin Summer Games but the political turmoil of World War I did not allow to carry forward.

After much later, IOC-sanctioned International Winter Sports Week was agreed to be celebrated. The 1924 games which witnessed major success led IOC to create a separate Winter Olympics. Then 1924 Games of France was designated as the first one. Since then, the Winter Games is being held every four years like the Summer Games.

This 23rd edition is going to make a whole lot of new histories. South Korea is for the first time hosting the Games. This is also the first Winter Olympics with more than 100 medal events due to the inclusion of four Olympic events – big air snowboarding, big air freestyle skiing, mixed doubles curling, and mass start speedskating races. This is also going to be the first Winter games for six countries including Ecuador, Eritrea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Singapore, Nigeria.


Winter Olympics south Korea Winter Games 2018 IOC France Winter Sports