How well do you know the Olympics?

How well do you know the Olympics?

Did you know that the first Winter Olympics debuted in 1924 in Chamonix, France? The 11-day event included Nordic skiing, figure skating, speed skating, ice hockey, and bobsledding. The winter games have come a long way in the decades since those first games.

More than 2,000 of the world’s top athletes representing more than 70 nations are competing in 78 different events in the 2002 Winter Olympics, now under way in Salt Lake City, Utah—in such sports as alpine skiing, ski jumping, bobsled, figure skating, ice hockey, speed skating, and snowboarding.

Some highlights from present and past Winter Olympics:

• The U.S. ice hockey team’s stunning 1980 defeat of the heavily favored Soviets ranks among the top Olympic moments. The “Miracle on Ice” at Lake Placid, N.Y., pitted a cast of underdog unknowns against a powerhouse team that, in the end, underestimated the scrappy Americans. As the final seconds ticked off, with the U.S. team ahead 4-3, television announcer Al Michaels excitedly cried out, “Do you believe in miracles?” The answer was a resounding “Yes.” The miracle team went on to defeat Finland and capture the gold.
• The five rings of the Olympic flag symbolize the continents Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and the Americas “linked together in friendship.” Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympics, claimed that at least one of the rings’ colors—yellow, blue, green, red, and black, and the white background—was in each country’s flag.
• Women’s skeleton—so named because the steel sled is ridden head first with a skeleton frame—and women’s bobsled are scheduled to debut at this year’s Olympics.
• Bjorn Dählie of Norway, a cross-country skier, has won the most medals from the Winter Games. He has 12—eight gold and four silver—all won from the Olympics in 1992-1998.
• Women first competed in the Olympics in 1900 when they took part in the tennis and golf events during the summer games.
• The Olympic flame is lighted at the ruins of a Greek temple by the sun’s rays reflected off a curved mirror. Women dressed in robes resembling those worn in ancient times, light the flame at the site of where the games began 2,700 years ago. The flame then is transported to where the games are held—this year flown across the Atlantic.
• Brotherly love helped twins Phillip and Steven Mahre take home the gold and silver in slalom during the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. Steve Mahre recorded the fastest time of the first run—an unusually difficult one—with Phil in third place. Phil skied an excellent second run and immediately grabbed a walkie-talkie to pass on advice about the course to the only person who stood between him and a gold medal—his brother Steve, according to the Olympic Museum. Steve finished 21 hundredths of a second behind Phil to give the twins a one-two finish.
• Speed skater Eric Heiden became the first Olympic athlete, winter or summer, to win five gold medals in individual events when he competed in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980.

Carol Davis is national editor of American Profile.

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