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Olympic Winter Games: Disciplines
Grace Buckley
Short Track
Biathlon Ski Jump
Speed Skating
Ice Hockey
Bobsleigh
Skeleton
Snowboarding
Alpine Skiing
Freestyle Skiing Cross Country Skiing
Nordic Combined Curling Chapter 1, article 6 of the 2007 edition of the Olympic Charter defines winter sports as "sports which are practised on snow or ice."
Figure Skating
These are all the disciplines that will feature at Sochi 2014 which all have a number of individual events. For example, Alpine Skiing consists of Men’s and Women’s downhill, super G, giant slalom, slalom and combined. Every Olympics, new events are added. This years are: Figure skating team event, Women’s ski jumping, Mixed relay biathlon, Ski Half-Pipe, Team relay luge, Ski slopestyle, Snowboard slopestyle and Snowboard parallel special slalom.
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Olympic Winter Games: Posters 1924-2014
Grace Buckley
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Olympic Winter Games: Politics
Grace Buckley The Winter Olympics were first politicised in the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen games in Nazi Germany. They were opened by Chancellor Adolf Hitler and were manipulated by the Nazi regime which supressed unfavourable press coverage and had lavish celebrations to mark the openings of new facilities. The IOC had forbidden Germany to exclude Jews from its Olympic team, but only one Jewish athlete - Rudi Ball represented his country in Ice Hockey. The Winter Olympics have been an idelogical front in the Cold War since the Soviet Union first participated in the 1956 games. Soviet and American politicians used the Olympics as an opportunity to prove the perceived superiority of their respective political systems Irina Rodnina, three-time Olympic gold medallist in figure skating, was awarded the Order of Lenin after her victory at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. Both the Soviet union and the USA gave financial awards to their winners of medals. The ‘Miracle On Ice’ is considered a political triumph for the USA as its Ice Hockey team of college students beat the Soviet Union professionals and then Finland to win gold at the 1980 Lake Placid games. It gave the country reason to feel good again after emerging from the Vietnam War, inflation and an energy crisis. The Soviets had also just invaded Afghanistan, rejuvinating the Cold War and 52 Americans were held hostage in Iran.
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Olympic Winter Games: Origins
Grace Buckley
The first international multi-sport event for winter sports was the Nordic Games held in Sweden in 1901. Figure skating was added onto the 1908 Summer Olympic Games in Great Britain. The last Nordic Games were held in 1926 two years after an International winter sports festival held in Chamonix, France. It was sponsored by the International Olympic Committee and organised by the French Olympic Committee. There was bobsleigh, curling, figure skating, ice hockey, military patrol and Nordic skiing. The games in Chamonix were decided retrospectively to be the first Winter Olympics. In the 1928 games in Lake Placid, USA, Eddie Eagan, who had been an Olympic champion in boxing in 1920, won the gold in the men's bobsleigh event to become the first, and so far only, Olympian to have won gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Arnold Lunn campaigned for the Slalom and Downhill skiing events to be held at the Winter Olympics unitl they were finally introduced in 1936. 1928 St Moritz
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Olympic Winter Games: Sochi 2014
Grace Buckley
The upcoming Sochi games that start on the 7th February 2014 have been very controversial already. The games are the most expensive in history, costing $51 billion with around half that sum alleged to have been embezzled by the main businessmen (and close associates of Vladimir Putin) who recieved contracts to build the venues and transport systems. A Human Rights Watch report accused firms contracted to build venues including the Central Olympic Stadium, the main Olympic village, and the main media centre of cheating workers out of wages and requiring them to work 12-hour shifts with few days off. The companies were also accused of confiscating passports and work permits, apparently to coerce employees to remain in exploitative jobs. A lot of the building projects remain unfinished. Many houses and buildings in Sochi have suffered landslides, trapping the inhabitants due to a dump further up the hill used by a construction company. Human rights concerns are mounting with global controversy caused by Russia's new laws forbidding "gay propaganda" to minors which many see as a homophobic law. Celebrities such as Tilda Swinton have shown their support to the LGBT community, with many appealing for a boycott of the games.