Denver 1976 - The First NOlympic City

In the wake of Rome's decision not to run for the 2024 Summer Games, it is interesting to remember that the first NOlympic city made headlines 40 years ago. When the 1976 Winter Games were opened in Innsbruck, Austria, on February 4th, the town had one of the shortest time spans to prepare in the history of the Olympics - only four years. Originally, the IOC had had completely other plans. At the closing ceremony of the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics, it had invited the youth of the world to reassemble four years from there in Denver, Co. (picture: Business Insider Australia).

The Mile High City hat edged out Vanocuver, BC, Sion, Switzerland, and Tampere, Finland, in the race for the 1976 Games in May 1970. The arguments for hosting the Olympics were quite similar to the ones used today: profit, prestige, development. This promotional video by the Denver Chamber of Commerce makes the intentions of the candidature clear:

But by the time of the Sapporo Games, clouds of doubt had already begun to overshadow Denver's effort. Many people questioned the ecological sustainability of a Winter Games whiches venues would be spread all over the state. Still, the main point of discussion was money. In the 1970s, most of the revenue of the Games came from selling TV rights with corporate sponsorship still non-existent. The rest had to come from public sources - and that is where the protest started.

While Sapporo had cost roughly $70 million, Denver officials claimed they would need only $30 million. Doubts about this rather low price tag spread immediately. Reports were leaked that the 1960 Squaw Valley Games had cost Californias's taxpayers $13.5 million, instead of the estimated $1 million. Rumors about exploding costs in Montreal, host oft the 1976 Summer Games, further fuelled the nervousness in Colorado.

When two State Representatives, Bob Jackson and future governor Dick Lamm, started to publicly criticize ecological and economical aspects, the protest against the Games errupted full scale. Looking back in 2009, Lamm told the Colorado Daily: "The organizing committee here was in way over their heads. They overestimated the benefits and underestimated the costs. Colorado was generally persuaded that they didn't have an adequate grasp on the figures and Colorado was very much liable to have to fund dramatic cost overruns." (picture: Westword)

After lots of discussions and two years of extensive PR campaigning on both sides, it came down to the voters. On November 7th, 1972, the people of Colorado had to descide wether to support a public bond issue for the Games worth $5 million. This sums seems absurdly low from today's perspective. It was not in 1972: By a vast margin of 60 to 40 percent, Colorado said NOlympics.

It took the organizers only one week to hand the 1976 Winter Olympics back to the IOC. (picture: Vintage Ski World)

The Best of Winter - Silver Medal: Squaw Valley 1960

The aerial view (picture: www.tahoebest.com) makes it perfectly clear what these Games where about: They were the most compact ever, both Summer and Winter. It took visitor's only a few footsteps from Blyth Arena to the speed skating rink, the bottom of the ski jump created by German expert Heini Klopfer and the finish line for the alpine ski events. The only events that took place away from the centre were the cross country ski races at McKinney Creek. The bobsleigh events had been cancelled before mainly due to the high costs.

1960 also marked the birth of an idea often copied later: a business effort to develop a ski ressort by landing the Olympic Games. New York lawyer Alexander Cushing had the genius to promote the by this time almost unknown ski resort in the Sierra Nevada mountains - and it worked. Squaw Valley was the first place on earth to be put on the global map only by hosting Olympic Games.

This film gives a nice overview of the Games:

Squaw Valley also marked the first time that television covered the Games on a wider scale. A few hours of footage has survived in the CBS archives.

The most stunning result of Squaw Valley was probably the triumph of German nordic combined athlete Georg Thoma, the first man from outside scandinavia to win the marquee event of nordic skiing. 34 years later, his nephew Dieter Thoma was part of the Gold medal winning German ski jumping team at the Lillehammer Games. By that time Germany (both East and West) already had developed a big tradition in the combined events.

Also a place in th history books gained the United States hockey team. 20 years prior to the miracle of Lake Placid, the crew stunned the Soviets 3-2 and took the Gold medal. The last player to have been cut from the team before Squaw Valley was Herb Brooks - the coach who later made the miracle of Lake Placid come true. A documentary about the 1960 team was published in 2009 with the fitting title "Forgotten Miracle":