1924 Winter Olympics

Highlights

Day 2

Charles Jewtraw of the United States won the first gold medal of the games in the 500-meter speed skate, making him the first Winter Olympic champion.

Day 4

Sonja Henie of Norway, at just eleven years old, took part in the ladies' figure skating competition. Although she finished last, she became popular with fans and went on to take gold at the following three Winter Olympics.

Day 6

Figure skater Gillis Grafström of Sweden became the first athlete to successfully defend his Summer Olympic title at the Winter Olympics (having won a gold medal in 1920).

Day 8

The Canadian ice hockey team (Toronto Granites) finished their qualifying round with three wins against Czechoslovakia (30–0), Sweden (22–0), and Switzerland (33–0), scoring a total of 85 goals and conceding none.

Day 10

Finding themselves in the same situation as Gillis Grafström, the Canadian ice hockey team is the last to defend their Summer Olympics title at the Winter Olympics successfully. Canada would dominate ice hockey in early Olympic competitions, winning six of the first seven gold medals awarded.

Epilogue

Taffy Abel (1900–1964) was an Indigenous Ojibwe ice hockey player. He was the first Native American in the Winter Olympic Games (1924 Hockey Silver Medal), the 1924 Flag Bearer for the United States at the 1924 Winter Olympics, the first Native American in the National Hockey League (1926), and a Stanley Cup champion (1929 and 1934).

At the closing ceremony, a prize for alpinism, a sport not officially included in the Olympic Winter Games, was awarded by Pierre de Coubertin to Lt Col Edward Strutt, the deputy leader of British expedition, on behalf of their attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1922.

For the first time in the history of the modern Olympics, the host country (in this case, France) failed to win any gold medals, finishing with three bronze medals. The same outcome occurred at the next Winter Olympics in St. Moritz where Switzerland won only a single bronze medal, the lowest ever output by a host nation at an Olympics. Later host nations to finish without gold medals included Canada at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Yugoslavia at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, and Canada for a second time at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

In 1925, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to organize the Olympic Winter Games every four years, independent of the Olympic Games proper, and recognized the International Winter Sports Week as the first Olympic Winter Games in retrospect.

The final individual medal of Chamonix 1924 was presented in 1974. The ski jumping event was unusual because the bronze medalist was not determined for fifty years. Norway's Thorleif Haug was awarded third place at the event's conclusion, but a clerical error in calculating Haug's score was discovered in 1974 by skiing historian Jakob Vaage, who further determined that Anders Haugen of the United States, who had finished fourth, had actually scored 0.095 points more than Haug. This was verified by the IOC. On 12 September 1974, Anders Haugen, at the age of 85, came to Norway and was presented the bronze medal by Anna Maria Magnussen, Thorleif Haug's youngest daughter.

In 2006, the IOC confirmed that the medals awarded to the 1924 curling and military patrol teams were official. The IOC verified that curling was officially part of the program, after the Glasgow Herald newspaper filed a claim on behalf of the families of the team.

Events

Medals were awarded in 16 events contested in 5 sports (9 disciplines). Many sources do not list curling and the military patrol as Olympic events, or list them as demonstration events. However, no such designation was made in 1924. In February 2006, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ruled that curling and military patrol were part of the Olympic program, and have included the medals awarded in the official count.

Skating

Venues

Main article: Venues of the 1924 Winter Olympics

• La Piste de Bobsleigh des Pellerins – Bobsleigh
• Le Tremplin Olympique du Mont – Ski jumping, Nordic combined (ski jumping)
• Stade Olympique de Chamonix – Cross-country skiing, Curling, Figure skating, Ice hockey, Military patrol, Nordic combined (cross-country skiing), and Speed skating

Participating nations

Athletes from 16 nations competed in the first Winter Olympic Games. Germany was banned from competing in the games, and instead hosted a series of games called Deutsche Kampfspiele.

• EST speed skater Christfried Burmeister was also in the list of participants but the message about his withdrawal was not sent to the organizers.

Number of athletes by National Olympic Committees

Medal count

Main article: 1924 Winter Olympics medal table

Pierre de Coubertin—founder of the IOC & father of the modern Olympics movement—personally awarded, in addition to the medals awarded in the sports competitions, 21 gold medals to members of the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition including 12 Britons, 7 Indians, 1 Australian and 1 Nepalese. Only the gold medal from 1924 is assigned to the Winter Olympics by the IOC in its database to the Mixed team, while the medals from 1932 and 1936 are assigned to the Summer Olympics for the respective NOCs.

Podium sweeps

Notes

References

References

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