The first Winter Olympic Games open in Chamonix
On this day · 25 January 1924
An "International Winter Sports Week" in the French Alps was such a hit that the IOC later crowned it the first Winter Olympics.
On January 25, 1924, athletes gathered in the Alpine town of Chamonix, France, for what was billed at the time as an International Winter Sports Week. Some 258 competitors from 16 nations went on to contest events across sports including speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey, ski jumping, cross-country skiing, and bobsleigh.
The meet was organized under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee but not yet formally an Olympic Games. It proved so successful, drawing more than 10,000 paying spectators, that the IOC retroactively anointed it the first Olympic Winter Games.
American Charles Jewtraw won the very first Winter Olympic gold, in the 500-meter speed skate.
Nordic athletes dominated the snow and ice, with Finland and Norway sweeping most of the medals on offer. An 11-year-old Norwegian named Sonja Henie finished dead last in figure skating, then grew up to become one of the sport’s greatest champions. A modest two-week experiment in the mountains had quietly founded a global tradition that endures a century later.
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