1952 Winter Olympics

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VI. winter Olympics
1952 Winter Olympics logo
Venue: Oslo ( Norway )
Stadion: Bislett Stadium
Opening ceremony: February 15, 1952
Closing ceremony: February 25, 1952
Opened by: Princess Ragnhild
Olympic oath : Torbjørn Falkanger (athlete)
Disciplines: 8 (4 sports)
Competitions: 22 in 8 sports
Countries: 30th
Athletes: 694, of which 109 women
← St. Moritz 1948
Cortina d'Ampezzo 1956 →
Medal table
space country G S. B. Ges.
1 NorwayNorway Norway 7th 3 6th 16
2 United States 48United States United States 4th 6th 1 11
3 FinlandFinland Finland 3 4th 2 9
4th GermanyGermany Germany 3 2 2 7th
5 AustriaAustria Austria 2 4th 2 8th
6th Canada 1921Canada Canada 1 - 1 2
ItalyItaly Italy 1 - 1 2
8th United KingdomUnited Kingdom Great Britain 1 - - 1
9 NetherlandsNetherlands Netherlands - 3 - 3
10 SwedenSweden Sweden - - 4th 4th
Complete medal table

The 1952 Winter Olympics (also known as the VI Winter Olympics ) were held from February 15 to 25, 1952 in Oslo , Norway , on predominantly existing sports facilities. This was the first time that the Olympic Winter Games were held in a Nordic country and in a capital. Because there was not enough snow for the slopes, the alpine slopes had to be artificially prepared.

nomination

Oslo won 17 votes in a single ballot at the 40th IOC session (June 21, 1947 in Stockholm ); Other candidates were Cortina d'Ampezzo (nine votes) and Lake Placid (one vote). For the first time, the capital of a state was the center of the Olympic Winter Games.

organization

The organization was the responsibility of a special committee founded in December 1947 , consisting of four Norwegian sports officials and four representatives from the city of Oslo, including its mayor Brynjulf ​​Bull . A lot of construction work was required, which was financed by the city of Oslo.

The Olympic flame was lit by Olav Bjaaland at the fireplace of the Norwegian ski pioneer Sondre Norheim , the "inventor of ski bindings ", in Morgedal and then carried by 97 skiers across the country to Oslo. The grandson of the well-known polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen was the last runner to bring the fire into the stadium for the opening ceremony.

Germany and Japan were invited to the Olympic Games again for the first time after the end of World War II . - Due to the high body weight of the German bobsleigh riders (who won the gold medals), the IOC decided on weight restrictions for bobsleds and riders with immediate effect.

For the first time women were able to take part in cross-country skiing competitions in the 10 km discipline.

A total of around 750,000 spectators attended the competitions; At ski jumping alone, around 120,000 were present to celebrate the victory of a Norwegian.

Competition venues

overview

The organizing committee had existing sports facilities checked and partially renewed. The ski slopes for the alpine competitions had to be rebuilt, however, as this winter sport was hardly widespread in Norway until now. They were chosen about 120 km from Oslo on Norefjell . Since there was a lack of snow, soldiers from the Norwegian army prepared the slopes with snow and water brought from the mountains.

The ski jump on Holmenkollen was available. The Korketrekkeren natural bobsleigh run was opened in 1951 with a few test runs, during the games it had to be slowed down on the second day of the competition by applying snow because there had been many accidents up until then.

For the ice hockey competitions a covered hall was built for the first time in Lillestrøm , about 20 kilometers east of Oslo , the Lillestrøm Stadium .

Oslo

Lillestrøm

Attendees

  • Countries with participating teams
  • Countries took part in winter games for the first time

    • A total of 30 nations sent athletes to the competitions of these Olympic Games, at that time the highest number of participating countries (a total of 1187 athletes including supervisors). Athletes from New Zealand and Portugal took part in the Winter Olympics for the first time. Australia , Germany (of the three existing German states at the time (FRG, GDR and Saarland ) only athletes from the Federal Republic of Germany took part in the games) and Japan took part again for the first time after the 1948 Winter Olympics . South Korea , Liechtenstein and Turkey did not send any athletes to Norway after participating in the 1948 Games.

    Europe (548 athletes from 22 nations)
    America (119 athletes from 4 nations)
    Asia (14 athletes from 2 nations)
    Oceania (12 athletes from 2 nations)
    (Number of athletes)
    * first participation in winter games

    Competition program

    overview

    22 competitions (16 for men, 5 for women and 1 mixed competition) in 4 sports / 8 disciplines were held. That's 5 more competitions but 1 less than in Sankt Moritz in 1948 - the number of sports remained the same. The changes are detailed below:

    • In alpine skiing , the combination for men and women has been replaced by the giant slalom.
    • Women's debut in cross-country skiing with the 10 km.
    • Skeleton singles for men has been removed from the Olympic program.

    Olympic sports / disciplines

    Number of competitions in brackets

    Time schedule

    Time schedule
    discipline Thursday
    14.    		 Fri.
    15.    		 Sat
    16.    		 Sun.
    17.    		 Mon.
    18.    		 Tuesday
    19.    		 Wed.
    20.    		 Thursday
    21.    		 Fr.
    22.    		 Sat.
    23.    		 Sun.
    24.    		 Mon.
    25.    		 Decision-
    disk-
    applications
    February
    Olympic rings without rims.svg Opening ceremony
    Bobsleigh pictogram.svg bob 1 1 2
    Ice hockey pictogram.svg ice Hockey 1 1
    Ice skating Figure skating pictogram.svg figure skating 1 1 1 3
    Speed ​​skating pictogram.svg Speed ​​skating 1 1 1 1 4th
    Skiing Alpine skiing pictogram.svg Alpine skiing 1 1 1 1 1 1 6th

    Nordic skiing    		 Nordic combined pictogram.svg Nordic combination 1 1
    Cross country skiing pictogram.svg Cross-country skiing 1 1 2 4th
    Ski jumping pictogram.svg Ski jumping 1 1
    Olympic rings without rims.svg Closing ceremony
    Demonstration competitions
    Bandy Bandy 1
    decisions 1 2 2 2 3 2 3 1 2 2 1 1 22nd
    Thursday
    14.    		 Fri.
    15.    		 Sat
    16.    		 Sun.
    17.    		 Mon.
    18.    		 Tuesday
    19.    		 Wed.
    20.    		 Thursday
    21.    		 Fr.
    22.    		 Sat.
    23.    		 Sun.
    24.    		 Mon.
    25.
    February

    Color legend

  • Opening ceremony
  • Competition day (no decisions)
  • Competition day (x decisions)
  • Closing ceremony

    • Opening and closing ceremony

    The opening and closing ceremony took place in the Bislett Stadium .

    opening

    Opening ceremony on February 15, 1952

    The sporting competitions had already started on February 14th with the women's giant slalom and the first two runs in the two-man bobsleigh, the opening only took place on February 15th.

    Since the British King, George VI. had died eight days earlier, the national flags were set at half-mast. Princess Ragnhild made the opening because her grandfather, the Norwegian King Haakon VII , was in London at the funeral . It was the first time that a woman had opened the Olympic Games. The nations marched in the traditional order with Greece first, then the other countries according to the Norwegian alphabet and at the end the host country. Teams from Great Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand wore black armbands in memory of their late monarch. The last torchbearer was Eigil Nansen, the grandson of the famous Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen . Norwegian ski jumper Torbjørn Falkanger took the athlete's oath .

    Closing ceremony

    The closing ceremony was a separate event and differed from the previous ones in that it was held immediately after the last sports competition. This time the Norwegian King Haakon VII was also present. For the time being, the award ceremonies for the men's relay took place (with an embarrassing breakdown, as the teams from Norway and Sweden had not been admitted by the law enforcement officers, which was obviously only noticed in the middle of the award), the women's cross-country run, then the ice hockey event, with the Sweden still appeared in their team suits, and then for the special jumping.

    The city of Oslo had installed its own Olympic flag for the winter games for the first time. So far, there has only been the Antwerp flag , which has been transferred from the Summer Games to the Winter Games. Oslo's Mayor Bull presented the new flag to IOC President Sigfrid Edström , who declared this flag to be the one to be passed from one Winter Olympics venue to the next. The Greek and Italian flags (the latter for the 1956 Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo ) were also raised. The IOC President declared the Games over in French and thanked the Norwegians for their work in their mother tongue. The Olympic flame went out at 9 p.m. at the closing ceremony in the Bislett Stadium, also in the large bowl in front of the train station, on the terrace of the National Theater and also in Morgedal, the lonely snowy landscape of Telemarken. After the Olympic fire went out, there was a special speed skating race, a figure skating exhibition with u. a. Olympic champion Altwegg, György Czakó and the pair skaters Marianna and László Nagy, and finally 40 children in national costumes performed an ice dance. The event ended with a 20-minute fireworks display.

    Outstanding athletes

    Worth mentioning

    • 395 journalists and 74 photographers were admitted.
    • The Austrian skier Engelbert Haider announced in mid-December 1951 that he would not take part in the Games: he would not have been able to cope with the nervous strain after a Norwegian press campaign against him because he was a member of the occupation forces in Norway.
    • The Saarland did not send its own team, the all-German team planned by the IOC was not accepted by GDR officials.
    • The Soviet Union was not yet represented by athletes, but a delegation from the National Olympic Committee arrived in Oslo to attend the IOC General Assembly .
    • In alpine skiing, the combinations for men and women have been replaced by the giant slalom.
    • At the ski jumping on February 24th, the Norwegian royal family was present with the monarch himself and Prince Harald and Princess Ragnhild as visitors.
    • The press hotel Viking with 1,024 rooms was also called “The Great Fool's House”.
    • On the evening of February 24th, special issues of the Swedish newspaper Aftenposten were already available in Oslo , which was a sensation because in Norway working in the newspaper industry on Sundays was forbidden. The Aftenposten had set up an editorial office in Stockholm especially for that day, and the reporters had radioed the reports to Sweden with portable speech devices. There the newspaper was edited, printed and brought to Norway by air.
    • In mid-December, 26 people secured their first tickets. The evening before the town hall in Oslo, where the tickets could be bought, they had already gathered with radios, blankets and bedding to be the first.
    • The Norwegian Post issued special postage stamps for the occasion.

    Web links

    Commons : 1952 Winter Olympics  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ a b Austria's ski team for Norefjell , column 2 . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 12, 1952, p. 10 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
    2. ↑ «Grand opening» . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 16, 1952, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
    3. ↑ a b c The Olympic flame went out . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 26, 1952, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
    4. ^ Atmospheric closing ceremony in thick fog in: Sport Zürich No. 25 of February 27, 1952; Page 2.
    5. ↑ In a few lines , 2nd article . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 16, 1951, p. 16 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
    6. ↑ In a few lines , 1st article . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 16, 1951, p. 16 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
    7. ^ The downhill route in Norefjell , subtitle: Birger Ruud on the Haider case . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 22, 1951, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
    8. ↑ Olympic patience ; Gloss column 4 . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 15, 1951, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).