The 1964 Winter Olympics, officially known as the IX Olympic Winter Games () and commonly known as Innsbruck 1964 (), were a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Innsbruck, Austria, from January 29 to February 9, 1964. The city was already an Olympic candidate, unsuccessfully bidding to host the 1960 Games. Innsbruck won the 1964 Games bid, defeating the cities of Calgary in Canada and Lahti in Finland. The sports venues, many of which were built for the Games, were located within a radius of around Innsbruck. The Games included 1,091 athletes from 36 nations, which was a record for the Winter Games at the time. Athletes participated in six sports and ten disciplines which bring together a total of thirty-four official events, seven more than the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. The luge made its debut on the Olympic program. Three Asian nations made their Winter Games debut: North Korea, India and Mongolia.
The Soviet Union broke the record for the most gold and overall medals at a single Winter Olympics, with eleven and twenty five respectively, and finished first in the medal table. The USSR was followed by Austria, the host country, which won twelve medals, four of which were gold. Soviet athletes Lidia Skoblikova won all four women's races of speed skating and Klavdiya Boyarskikh won all three events of cross-country skiing. The Swedish cross-country skier Sixten Jernberg, a three-time medalist at these Games, became the first athlete to collect nine medals at the Winter Games. In alpine skiing, the French sisters Christine and Marielle Goitschel each obtained a gold and a silver medal. Before the Games, the Austrian army was mobilized to deal with the lack of snow. They brought thousands of cubic meters of it from Brenner Pass, close to the Italian border. The Olympic Winter Games was held for a second time at Innsbruck in 1976.
The Olympic Torch was carried by Joseph Rieder,"Olympic Winter Games Innsbruck 1964" (history), kiat.net, webpage: KIAT-Innsbruck . a former alpine skier who had participated in the 1956 Winter Olympics.
The Games were affected by the deaths of Australian alpine skier Ross Milne and British luge slider Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, during training, and by the deaths, three years earlier, of the entire United States figure skating team and family members.
Bid and background for the Games Host city selection The city of Innsbruck submitted its first Olympic bid in the 1950s to host the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. The Austrians had a convincing bid and were viewed as the favorites to host the games. However, in the second round of the vote the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected the American city of Squaw Valley due to its ambitious designs.
A month later, the Innsbruck authorities decided to enter a bid again for the 1964 Winter Games. On 26 May 1959, during the 55th session of the (IOC) in Munich, West Germany, the Austrians were selected in a landslide for the Games with 49 votes in the first round, ahead of Calgary (Canada), which obtained 9 votes and Lahti (Finland), which did not receive a vote.
+ 1964 Winter Olympics bidding result City Country Round 1 Innsbruck 49 Calgary 9 Lahti 0
Political situation Despite the construction of the Berlin Wall by East Germany in 1961, which increased tensions between East and West and the fact that the East Germans wanted to have their own team, the managed to maintain the United Team of Germany for the third consecutive Olympiad. In the 1960s, the IOC also discussed the Olympic participation of South Africa, a country immersed in the apartheid regime. During the Games in Innbruck, the IOC President Avery Brundage announced that the country would not be able to participate in the 1964 Summer Olympics because of its policy of racial segregation in sport. On the other hand, several African countries which had become independent joined the Olympic movement: the national Olympic committees of Algeria, of Congo, from Nigeria and Sierra Leone were recognized by the IOC during the session held during the Innsbruck Games. The number of IOC member nations increased to 114. In addition, the Innsbruck Games were used for the dissemination of political messages. Five Iranian students were arrested after marching with banners hostile to the shah. Twenty other Iranians, who demonstrated for the release of prisoners in their country, were also imprisoned.
Organization Organizing committee The organizing committee of the IX Winter Olympics in Innsbruck 1964 was formed on 2 June 1959. Heinrich Drimmel, President of the Austrian Olympic Committee and Federal Minister of Education, was elected as its president and Friedl Wolfgang was elected as its secretary-general. The organizing committee was made up of the general assembly, the board of directors, and the executive committee, as well as eight sub-committees created to manage the different aspects of the Games: finance, construction, sports, transport, etc. accommodation and medical services, lodging, administration and checks.
Financial aspects The Innsbruck Games cost around one billion schillings, or 40 million US dollars distributed among the organizing committee, the Austrian state, the Land of Tyrol and the city of Innsbruck. The organizers tried to reduce the expenses related to the provisional elements, and to invest more money for the facilities which would continue to be used after the Games. The Olympiaeisstadion costs 75 million schillings, the renovation of the Bergisel Ski Jump 15 million and the Olympic Sliding Centre Innsbruck 10 million. The development of ski slopes, cross-country skiing and biathlon required a total of 29 million. The Olympic village, intended to become a leisure center, costs 174 million. A total of 225 million was invested to renovate and develop the road network in the region.
Television The 1964 edition was the third time that the Winter Games were broadcast on television and the second time that exclusive broadcasting rights were sold. This was a substantial increase: where they were in 1960, the broadcast rights yielded in 1964, which was approximately 24 million schillings. Thirty countries broadcast the Games. The American channel ABC paid nearly 15.4 million schillings, or 64 per cent of the broadcast rights revenue. The Eurovision network spent around 7.6 million for 16 countries, the Soviet television 600,000 Rbls and the Intervision network for six countries in Western Europe. The CTV Television Network paid for the exclusive broadcast rights in Canada.
Schedule Calendar The Games were held over twelve days, from January 29 to February 9. Thirty-four events were on the program, an increase from the twenty-seven at Squaw Valley four years earlier. Three luge events (individual men and women, doubles men) were included in the Olympic program. Bobsled, which was absent from the 1960 Games due to the cost of building the track, returned to the Games. Ski jumping was divided into two events (small and large hill) and the women's 5-kilometer was added in cross-country skiing. Ice stock sport (Eisstockschießen), a variant of curling popular in Alpine countries, was a demonstration sport as in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936. In total, 1,073,000 people attend the various events. The disciplines which attracted the most spectators were alpine skiing and ice hockey.
OC Opening ceremony ● Event competitions 1 Event finals CC Closing ceremony
January 1964February 1964 29Wed 30Thu 31Fri 1Sat 2Sun 3Mon 4Tue 5Wed 6Thu 7Fri 8Sat 9Sun Events Ceremonies OC CC Biathlon 1 1 Bobsleigh ● 1 ● 1 2 Nordic combined ● 1 1 Ice hockey ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 1 1 Luge ● ● 2 1 3 Figure skating 1 ● ● 1 ● ● 1 3 Speed skating 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 Ski jumping 1 1 2 Alpine skiing 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 Cross-country skiing 1 1 1 2 1 1 7 EisstockThis competition is a demonstration. ● ● — Daily medal events 1 3 2 4 4 4 2 4 3 3 2 2 34 Total 1 4 6 10 14 18 20 24 27 30 32 34 34 † The numeral indicates the number of event finals for each sport held that day.
Weather conditions before the Games In the weeks leading up to the Games, temperatures often rose above due to the foehn, a hot, dry wind. There was no major snowfall for seven weeks, and the rain melted snow and ice at sports venues. This was the first time in around a century that the snowfall had been so low in Tyrol. Two weeks before the start of the Games, thousands of Austrian soldiers were mobilized to transport by truck 40,000 m3 of snow from the Brenner Pass, close to the Italian border, and spread it by hand on the ski slopes. 20,000 m3 of snow was built up, and 20,000 blocks of ice were transported to the bobsleigh and toboggan run.
Opening ceremony
The opening ceremony took place on January 29 at the Bergisel Ski Jump stadium in front of approximately 50,000 spectators. The Games were opened by the president of Austria, Adolf Schärf. The bobsledder Paul Aste took the Olympic oath. Aste modified the oath slightly: instead of saying "for the glory of sport and the honor of our countries", he replaced the word "country" with "teams" to remove the nationalist elements of the oath. This was the first time that the Olympic flame of the Winter Games has been lit in front of the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece. In the stadium, the alpine skier Josef Rieder lit the cauldron. Tyrolean orchestras performed during the ceremony.
Events Biathlon
The biathlon made its second Olympic appearance. As in 1960, the only event contested was a 20-kilometer cross-country ski race with four shooting ranges of 100 to 250 meters. Soviet athlete Vladimir Melanin, a heavy favorite, won the event. This was the first time he did not miss any of his twenty shots in a major competition. His compatriot Aleksandr Privalov, who also had a clean shoot, was second by more than three minutes and the Norwegian Olav Jordet, who missed a target, won the bronze medal. The Finn Veikko Hakulinen was the fastest, but missed six shots and finished 15th.
Bobsleigh
The bobsleigh was not on the program for the 1960 Winter Olympic Games, at Squaw Valley in the United States, because of the low number of crews and the cost of building the track. In 1964, bobsleigh events made a comeback and were contested on the Olympic Sliding Centre Innsbruck. Neither of the two Olympic champion teams, Great Britain and Canada, had a track in their country at the time.
During the first round of the two-man event, the bobsleigh of the British Robin Dixon and Tony Nash was damaged and the competition's favorite, the Italian Eugenio Monti, lent them an axle bolt. After two rounds, the British beat the two Italian teams. After the third set, the Italians Sergio Zardini and Romano Bonagura beat Dixon and Nash by just five hundredths of a second. Finally, Dixon and Nash become Olympic champions with 12 hundredths ahead of silver medalists Zardini and Bonagura and 73 over third, Eugenio Monti and Sergio Siorpaes. This is the only time in history that the British have been Olympic bobsleigh champions. After the Games, Monti received the first International Fair Play Committee Pierre de Coubertin World Trophy for his sportsmanship towards the British team.
The Canadians surprised in the four-man bobsleigh event. As the country competed for the first time in the Olympic bobsleigh events, the pilot's team Vic Emery won the first round, breaking the track record, and increased his lead in the following three rounds. Canada won gold by more than a second ahead of Erwin Thaler 's Austrian bobsleigh and Eugenio Monti' s Italian bobsleigh.
Nordic combined
The Nordic combined event took place in the village of Seefeld in Tirol. On the first day, the competitors did three jumps and the two best results are recorded. The next day, they did a 15-kilometer cross-country ski race. The final ranking was established with a new points system.