1968 Winter Olympics

The 1968 Winter Olympics, officially known as the X Olympic Winter Games (french: Les Xes Jeux olympiques d'hiver), were a winter multi-sport event held from 6 to 18 February 1968 in Grenoble, France. Thirty-seven countries participated. Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy won three gold medals in all the alpine skiing events. In women's figure skating, Peggy Fleming won the only United States gold medal. The games have been credited with making the Winter Olympics more popular in the United States, not least of which because of ABC's extensive coverage of Fleming and Killy, who became overnight sensations among teenage girls.

The 1968 Winter Games marked the first time the IOC permitted East and West Germany to enter separately, and the first time the IOC ordered drug and gender testing of competitors.

Norway won the most gold and overall medals, the first time since 1952 Winter Olympics that the Soviet Union did not top the medal table by both parameters.

Host city selection

On 24 November 1960, François Raoul, the prefect of the Isère Département Ski Federation, officially presented the idea of hosting the 1968 Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble. After the city council agreed in principle, different government agencies offered their support, and the villages around Grenoble also reacted positively, an application committee was formed and led by Albert Michallon, the former mayor of Grenoble on 30 December 1960. The application was officially given to the IOC during a meeting between IOC executives and representatives of international sport agencies in Lausanne in February 1963.

In the application, the decision was not solely based on sport, because there had only been two important sport events in the Isère Département: the Bobsleigh World Championships of 1951 in L'Alpe d'Huez and the Luge World Championships of 1959 in Villard-de-Lans. Between 1946 and 1962, the number of inhabitants in Grenoble increased from 102,000 to 159,000, and the total inhabitants in the Département Isère increased from 139,000 to 250,000. The development of the infrastructure could not keep up with this rapid increase, and was, for the most part, at the same level as before World War II. The people who were responsible never made a secret out of it that it was mainly for them about using the Olympic Games to receive larger grants to quickly develop dated infrastructure and support the local economy.

The 61st IOC session, where the awarding of the Olympic Games would have been voted for, would have taken place in Nairobi, Kenya. This session was moved to Baden-Baden, West Germany, because Kenya refused entry to IOC members from Portugal and South Africa for political reasons. Due to a lack of time, only the 1968 Summer Olympics host city could be voted for. The vote finally took place in Innsbruck on 28 January 1964, a day before the start of the 1964 Winter Olympics. 51 members who were eligible to vote were in attendance and Grenoble were awarded the games after the third round of voting and were competing against Calgary, who were awarded the Games 20 years later.

Organisation

After Grenoble was voted as the host city, the French National Olympic Sports Committee decided the foundation of the organisation committee. The Comité d'Organisation des dixièmes Jeux Olympiques (COJO), the committee for the organisation of the 10th Olympic Winter Games, started to plan the games for the first time on 1 August 1964. Albert Michallon, alongside being the former mayor of Grenoble, was also president of COJO. The upper panel was made up of the general assembly with its 340 members and the supervisory board conduct business with 39 members, 19 of which were appointed and the other 20 were voted for. The general secretary consisted of five main departments and 17 subordinate departments. The number of employees grew to 1920 in February 1968.

The French government played a major role in the preparations for the Games, as president Charles de Gaulle saw an opportunity to present Grenoble as a symbol for a modern France. Francois Missoffe, Minister for Youth and Sport, formed an interministerial committee for the coordination of the work commissioned by prime minister Georges Pompidou. Over 7000 soldiers of the French armed forces and also employees of the ministries for Youth and Sport, Finance, Social Building, Education, Post, Culture and Transport were employed. The sum of the investments contributed to CNF$1.1 billion Francs (roughly 775 million pounds). The government contributed 47.08%, the Isere Department 3.65%, the city of Grenoble 20.07% and the surrounding communities 1.37%. Different institutions, such as the national train company SNCF; the television broadcaster ORTF; the government housing association and the regional association of hospitals provided the rest of the money.

These means were used accordingly; 465.181 million Francs for the infrastructure of transport and communications, 250.876 million for the olympic village and press area, 92.517 million for the sports arenas, 57.502 million for television and radio, 45.674 million for culture, 95.116 million for the city's infrastructure and 90.429 million for the running of COJO. They built a new airport, two motorway sections of 7.5 miles and 15 miles, a switchboard, a new town hall, a new police station, a fire station, a hospital with 560 beds, a congress and exhibition centre and a culture palace. They upgraded the access road to the outer sport arenas, an orbital road round Grenoble as well as relocating the rail tracks and removing the level crossings and building a completely new main train station.

To test the new sport complex and to improve organisational processes, they organized "International Sports Weeks". Speed skating competitions and ski races took place from 20 January to 19 February 1967; an ice hockey tournament from 12 to 15 October; and a figure-skating competition from 23 to 25 November.

Torch relay

On 16 December 1967, the olympic torch was lit in Olympia, Greece. The ceremony would have taken place on 13 December, but was postponed due to the attempted coup d'état of King Constantine II, who had been forced from his throne eight months before, against the dictatorial military regime of Georgios Papadopoulos. The route of the torch relay at first led over Mount Olympus to Athens. From there, the torch was flown by an Air France Boeing 707 to the Orly International Airport, where the torch was received by Jean Vuarnet, the 1960 Downhill Olympic gold medalist, on 19 December, who handed it on to the first torchbearer Alain Mimoun, the 1956 Marathon Olympic gold medalist.

The torch relay in France went over a distance of 7,222 kilometers through 41 districts and 170 towns to the Isère district. 5,000 torchbearers, who transported the torch on foot, by bike, by boat, by skies or by motorbike, took part in the relay. The part of the way that led through the old harbour of Marseilles was done by a diver who, while swimming, held the torch just over the surface of the water. The torchbearers were accompanied by around 80,000 athletes and watched by an audience of about two million people. The last stop on the day before the opening ceremony was Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse. From there, the torch was carried to Grenoble.

The 33 torches that were used in the relay were produced by the Société technique d'équipement, a subsidiary of the Compagnie de Saint-Gobain. They were 70 cm tall, weighed 1750 g, were made of copper and had a propane gas tank. The reserve flames (a cautionary measure in case the torch went out) burned in twenty carbide lamps, the same as the Olympic fire when it was transported from Athens to Paris in a plane.

Visual appearance

The logo for the 1968 Winter Olympic Games portrays a floating snow crystal surrounded by three stylised roses on top of the single-coloured (in white) Olympic rings. The roses can be found in the same pattern (two on the top and one below) as Grenoble's emblem.

For the first time, there was an Olympic mascot, although it was unofficial. The mascot was named Schuss, a stylised skier wearing a blue skiing costume and a large red ball as a head. The mascot designed by Aline Lafargue was hardly recognised publicly. It had unofficial character, was marked with great restraint and appeared solely on pins and several toys.

Jack Lesage, who specialised in mountain and winter sport recordings, filmed two Olympic advertisements of 15–18 minutes in length before the Olympic Games took place, contracted by the Organisation Committee. "Trois roses, cinq anneaux" ("Three roses, five rings") emerged in 1966, and showed Grenoble, as well as the surrounding venues, in the early stage of preparation. In 1967, "Vaincre à Grenoble" ("Victory in Grenoble") emerged, and documented the progress of the workers, complemented with images of the sport competitions. Both films appeared in three different versions with French, English and German commentary. In France, the films were shown in cimemas before particular feature films, abroad for receptions and presentations.

The French post office issued six Olympic-themed postage stamps. On 22 April 1967, a label next appeared worth 0.60 francs with the official logo as its motif. On 27 January 1968, ten days before the opening ceremony, a series of five semi-postal stamps followed. The designs were ski jumpers and skiers (0.30++ 0,10 F), ice hockey players (0.40 + 0,10 F), the olympic torch (0.60 + 0.20 F), a female ice skater (0.75 + 0.25 F) and slalom racers (0.95 + 0.35 F). The proceeds from the supplement stamps were split between the French Red Cross and the Organisation Committee.

Highlights

* Norway won the most medals, 6 gold, 6 silver, and 2 bronze, the first time a country other than the Soviet Union had done so since the USSR first entered the Winter Games in 1956.
* In the downhill skiing event, French hero Jean-Claude Killy won the gold medal with a time of 1:59.85.
* Killy also swept the other men's Alpine events, but only after one of the greatest controversies in the history of the Winter Olympics. Austrian superstar Karl Schranz claimed that a mysterious man in black crossed his path during the slalom race, causing him to skid to a halt. Given a restart, Schranz beat Killy's time. However, a Jury of Appeal disqualified Schranz and gave the medal to Killy.
* The East German women's luge team, who had won gold, silver, and fourth, were all disqualified for heating their runners.
* Swedish skier Toini Gustafsson was a star in women's cross-country events, winning both individual races and earning a silver medal in the relay.
* American figure skater Peggy Fleming built up a huge lead after the compulsory figures and won the first-place votes of all nine judges. Her victory marked the first gold medal won by an American after the death of an entire US figure skating team in an air crash in 1961, and heralded an American figure skating renaissance.
* Married couple Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov successfully defended their pairs figure skating title from Innsbruck for the Soviet Union.
* Italian bobsleigh pilot Eugenio Monti drove both the two-man and four-man events to win gold.
* All bobsleigh contests had to be scheduled to start before sunrise and end shortly after dawn because the track at L'Alpe d'Huez was designed with insufficient cooling capability and could not keep the ice solid in bright daylight.
* In speed skating, the women's 3,000-metre event turned out to be particularly fast, with the first 10 finishers beating the previous Olympic record set in Squaw Valley in 1960. However, the gold medallist, the Netherlands' Johanna "Ans" Schut, was unable to beat the world record—until the next year on the same oval in Grenoble.
* Sex tests for women were introduced.
* The 1968 Winter Olympics were the first to use "Bugler's Dream" by Leo Arnaud as the theme for Olympic television coverage on ABC. It was also the first Olympics to be broadcast in color.
* These were the first Winter Olympics on which doping control tests were performed.
* Italian cross-country skier Franco Nones became the first athlete not from Norway, Sweden, Finland, or the Soviet Union to win an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing.

Venues

*Autrans – biathlon, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, ski jumping (normal hill)
*Chamrousse – alpine skiing (men)
*L'Anneau de Vitesse in Paul Mistral Park – speed skating
* Le Stade de Glace in Paul Mistral Park – figure skating, ice hockey, medal and closing ceremonies
* Piste de Bobsleigh – bobsleigh
* Piste de Luge – luge
* Recoin de Chamrousse – alpine skiing (women)
*Saint-Nizier-du-Moucherotte – ski jumping (large hill)
*Olympic Stadium (Grenoble) – opening ceremonies

There were five other venues surrounding Grenoble used as sporting venues for the Winter Olympic Games in 1968. For the first time in history, the venues were divided into four clusters. Grenoble set a new trend by having venues in different parts of the surrounding areas. Compared to the investments for the infrastructure, the investments for building sports arenas was very small. This investment only contributed nine percent.

Almost half of this investment, 46 million Francs, was used to build the new ice rink ''Stade de glace'' (today '' Palais des Sports''), the venue where the mainice hockey tournament matches was held, the figure skating competition and the closing ceremony a. The arena has 12,000 seats and is situated in '' Parc Paul Mistral'', Grenoble's main public park located in the center of the city. The architects were Robert Demartini and Pierre Junillon. Construction began in mid-November 1965 and finished in October 1967. The roof was made of two cylindrical which crossed over each other, four columns which could support 10,000 tonnes. Today, the arena is used for concerts, fairs and various other sporting events (among others six-day races since 1971)

Less than 100m away from the ''Stade de glace'', and also in Parc Paul Mistral, the 400m track for the speed skating events was installed between February and November 1966. The venue ''Patinoire de vitesse'', which does not have a roof and has a practice ice-rink in the middle of it, had a capacity of 2,500. The cooling system was removed after a few years and today the concrete track is used by roller skaters. The exisiting was the city's ice-rink ''Patinoire Municipale'', which opened in September 1963, next to the speed skating track, where the 1964 European Figure Skating Championship took place. The arena, which has 2,000 seats and 700 can stand, was the venue for Group B's ice hockey matches.

The venue for the alpine skiing was Chamrousse, a town 30 kilometres east of Grenoble. The finish line for five out of the six races was in the region of ''Recoin de Chamrousse'', the other was the men's downhill event was in Casserousse. In the construction of the new ski slopes, around 300,000m³ of rocks had to be blown up or dug away; particularly large movements of the earth and changes to the terrain were necessary in the upper part of the men's downhill section and in the slalom section. In addition, six new chairlifts were installed. In the preparation of the slopes, over 10,000 people were needed, this consisted mainly of soldiers.

In Autrans, 36 kilometres west of Grenoble in Vercors Massif, the cross-country skiing and biathlon events took place there. Provisional stands at the finish line were available for spectators, which were to the north and southwest of the village. Also in Autrans, the ski jumping in the normal hill took place. The ski jumping hill of Le Claret is still in use today. It originally had a hill size of 70m, but later was made bigger and now measures 90m high.

The 90m hill could have been built without any problems in Autrans, but the organisers decided instead to use Saint-Nizier-du-Moucherotte, 17 kilometres away from Grenoble, as well as Vercors-Massif. The relatively small distance to the city and the better accessibility guaranteed a larger audience. The construction period lasted from July 1966 to January 1967. After the games, the Dauphine hill was only rarely used and closed down and fell into ruin beginning in 1990. A third Olympic venue in the Vercors-Massif was Villard-de-Lans, 34 kilometres from Grenoble, where the luge competition took place. The track is exactly 1,000m long, has 14 curves and has a drop of 110m. After it temporarily closed down in 1994 it was remodelled. Today, it now has an artificial surface which makes it possible to use all-year-round. It is no longer used for competitions.

The third Olympic venue in Vercors Massif was 34 km away from Grenoble in the commune of Villard-de-Lans, where the luge competition took place. The track for the luge was exactly 1 km long, had 14 corners and had a drop of 110m. After the track was temporarily closed in 1994, it was rebuilt at today's location. It has an artificial surface, which makes using the track all year round possible. For competitions it is no longer used.

The furthest distance, which is also the highest, is L'Alpe d'Huez, 65 kilometres southeast of Grenoble. The bobsleigh took place at Col de Poutran at a height of around 2,000m. It was 1,500m long, had 13 corners and had a drop of 140m. It was principally a natural course, but three of the corners were exposed to direct sunlight, and was kept artificially frozen by ammonia and liquid nitrogen. In L'Alpe d'Huez, a replacement course was made available for the alpine skiing.

Accommodation

The Olympic village was located in the southern part of the city on the border with the suburbs of Échirolles

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