VIII Olympic Winter Games, Squaw Valley 1960

The story of Squaw Valley's going after and getting the 1960 Winter Games--well, Alexander Cushing's going after and getting them, more precisely--is great.

From pages 582 and 583 of the 1961 Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook:

Squaw Valley, a tiny California village in the High Sierras, was host to 850 athletes from 31 nations for the VIII Winter Games. Snow fell on the opening day, February 18, but thereafter the weather was excellent. The winter events began amid some grumbling about the site and the state of preparation, but the criticism turned to praise before the closing ceremonies on February 28.

The Russians, who competed in the Winter Olympics for the first time in 1956, greatly increased their supremacy, gaining seven gold medals and earning more than double the points of any other country in the unofficial scoring. The United States repeated its triumphs in both the men's and women's figure skating, and achieved a major upset by winning the hockey championship. In total points, the United States rose to third from sixth in 1956. …

The American hockey team was unbeaten with five victories, including a 2-to-1 triumph over Canada, the Canadians' only defeat. Backed by the excellent goal tending of Ted McCartan, the Americans defeated Russia by 3 to 2. The Soviet Union finished the tournament with two victories, two defeats and one tie.

In the finale of the round-robin play, the United States trailed Czechoslovakia, 4 to 3, after two periods. During the intermission, Soviet Captain Nikolai Sologubov visited the American dressing room and suggested that the disconsolate team try inhaling oxygen to offset the 6,200-ft. altitude. Taking this advice, the Americans went on to score six goals in the third period and defeat the Czechs, 9 to 4. Three of the last-period goals were scored by Roger Christian, who totaled four for the game.

The winter carnival attracted 240,900 spectators during the 11 days of competition, but did not prove a profitable venture for the promoting organization. However, the State of California provided financial backing and will develop the site further as a state park.

Bobsledding was omitted from the program because too few nations indicated an interest.

Medals table:

1. Soviet Union 7 gold, 5 silver, 9 bronze

2. Germany 4, 3, 1

3. United States 3, 4, 3

4. Norway 3, 3, 0

5. Sweden 3, 2, 2

6. Finland 2, 3, 3

7. Canada 2, 1, 1

8. Switzerland 2, 0, 0

9. Austria 1, 2, 3

10. France 1, 0, 2

11. Netherlands 0, 1, 1

11. Poland 0, 1, 1

13. Czechoslovakia 0, 1, 0

14. Italy 0, 0, 1

15. Argentina 0, 0, 0

15. Australia 0, 0, 0

15. Bulgaria 0, 0, 0

15. Chile 0, 0, 0

15. Denmark 0, 0, 0

15. Great Britain 0, 0, 0

15. Hungary 0, 0, 0

15. Iceland 0, 0, 0

15. Japan 0, 0, 0

15. South Korea 0, 0, 0

15. Lebanon 0, 0, 0

15. Liechtenstein 0, 0, 0

15. New Zealand 0, 0, 0

15. South Africa 0, 0, 0

15. Spain 0, 0, 0

15. Turkey 0, 0, 0

("Winter Olympics." Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook (New York: Crowell-Collier Publishing Corporation, 1961) 582-583.)

XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 8)

Medals table:

1. Germany 7 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze

Five of the Germans' 12 overall medals and four of their golds have come in the luge. Otherwise, Germany has scored a couple of medals in alpine skiing and one each in biathlon, cross-country skiing, figure skating, Nordic combined and ski jumping.

2. Switzerland 5, 1, 1

A couple of golds each in alpine and cross-country skiing and one in snowboarding have Switzerland on track for its best-ever Olympic Winter Games medals-table performance. The Swiss have also earned a silver in biathlon and a bronze in alpine skiing.

3. Canada 4, 5, 2

Freestyle skiing has been Canada's area of dominance: three gold, two silver and one bronze. The other Canadian gold was in short-track skating. There also have been a couple of silvers in figure skating and one in speed skating and a bronze in snowboard.

4. Netherlands 4, 3, 6

The Dutch have a bronze in short track skating. Other than that, it has been a lackluster Olympics for the Netherlands … oh, except the speed skaters have four gold, three silver and five bronze.

4. Norway 4, 3, 6

Cross-country skiing is the Norwegians' thing: three gold, one silver, three bronze. The biathlon (cross-country skiing with guns) has yielded a gold and silver, too, for Norway. Otherwise, there's a silver in snowboard and a bronze each in alpine skiing (cross-country skiing, only the country is sloped downward), Nordic combined (cross-country skiing, plus ski jumping) and ski jumping.

4. United States 4, 3, 6

Five of Team USA's medals (including one of the golds) have been in freestyle skiing; four (including the other three golds) have been in snowboarding. The other medals have come in skeleton (silver), alpine skiing (bronze), figure skating (bronze) and luge (bronze).

7. Russian Federation 3, 6, 5

Good medal distribution for the home team: three (and two gold) in figure skating, three (and one gold) in short track, two in biathlon, two in luge, two in speed skating, one in freestyle skiing and one in skeleton.

8. China 3, 2, 0

The Chinese have scored two gold medals and a silver in short track, a gold in speed skating and a silver in freestyle skiing.

9. Belarus 3, 0, 1

Belarus has two golds and a bronze in biathlon and a gold in freestyle skiing. Surely, Darya Domracheva--who has two golds in her two biathlon events so far in Sochi, with two to go--must be a national sports hero.

10. Austria 2, 4, 1

Four of the medals (two gold, a silver and a bronze) have come in alpine skiing, and then the Austrians have a silver each in biathlon, luge and ski jumping.

11. France 2, 0, 2
12. Poland 2, 0, 0
13. Sweden 1, 5, 2
14. Japan 1, 2, 1
15. Slovenia 1, 1, 2
16. South Korea 1, 0, 1
17. Great Britain 1, 0, 1
18. Slovakia 1, 0, 0
19. Italy 0, 2, 3
20. Czech Republic 0, 2, 1
21. Finland 0, 2, 0
21. Australia 0, 1, 1
21. Croatia 0, 1, 0
24. Latvia 0, 0, 2

25. Kazakhstan 0, 0, 1
25. Ukraine 0, 0, 1

Previous reports:

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 7);
-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 6);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 5);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 4);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 3);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 2);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 1);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day 0);

-- XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi 2014 (Day a);

-- XII Olympic Winter Games, Innsbruck 1976;

-- II Olympic Winter Games, Saint Moritz 1928, and

-- I Olympic Winter Games, Chamonix 1924.

XII Olympic Winter Games, Innsbruck 1976

The Sportscaster Cards were, indeed, awesome but perhaps not as awesome as this website "dedicated to their preservation." There's nothing that I will add here that is potentially as entertaining as simply browsing that website, so I encourage you to not read another word of this post before exhausting the link.

OK, now that you're back, let me just say that I loved my Sportscaster Cards. I had maybe a couple hundred of them at the height of my collection, but I sold off most of them to the nice fellow (and Church of Christ Sunday-school teacher) at Rocking Chair Antiques in Paducah along about 1984 or '85, when I decided I needed money probably to rent a tuxedo for prom or to pick up a copy of Quadrophenia or Nebraska at Camelot Records. I have zero doubt that Rocking Chair gave me a more-than-fair price for my cards, and I still listen to Quadrophenia and Nebraska, and I'm thankful I went to the prom because at least I was a little less terrified and awkward around girls by the time I got to WKU.

Still, I miss my Sportscaster Cards. I played with them a lot when I was 8, 9 and 10--and especially when I was 11 during the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980. I pushed ski jumpers off my bed; I scooted bobsledders around the shag carpet, and I even spun figure skaters on our cleared kitchen table. And when it came time for the Summer Games later that year, I went on and staged my own Cairo Road XXII Olympiad--in flaming defiance of President Carter's Moscow boycott.

So, all of that said, you might wonder why this post is labeled as being in commemoration of Innsbruck 1976 if my little Sportscaster Cards experience is more directly tied to Lake Placid 1980. Well, that's because the Sportscaster Cards depicting winter Olympians that I still own won most of their medals in XII, not XIII.

Says the back of his card: "Although he lost the 30 km cross-country title by 28 seconds to Sergei Saveliev of the USSR, 21-year-old William Koch was the star of one of the biggest success stories of the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics. The first American cross-country skier in the history of the Games ever to win a medal, Koch stunned the world of Nordic skiing, challenging the traditional domination of Scandinavian and Soviet athletes."

"(S)he collected three medals: a gold in the 500 m; a silver in the 1,500; and a bronze in the 1,000 m. Although her triple triumph at Innsbruck brought her a great deal of publicity, to Sheila it was something of an anticlimax. Her proudest moment had come a month earlier, on Jan. 31, 1976, at Davos. There she became the first woman to break the 41-second barrier, turning in a world-record time of 40.91 seconds in the 500 m. 'I much prefer my world record to the Olympic gold medal,' she said. 'For me it represents the crowning achievement of 16 years of work.'"

Austrian "Anton Innauer's uncanny ability, ease, and control catapulted him to the peak of the ski jumping world. These qualities also made him the super-favorite at the 1976 Olympics at Innsbruck. But the 17 1/2-year-old high-school boy muffed his Olympic chances. The pre-Games publicity and pressure took their toll, and Innauer had to settle for a silver medal in the 90 m jump."

"Meinhard Nehmer, who at the age of 35 won two gold medals in bobsledding at the 1976 Olympics, is symbolic of the great potential of the East German athletes. Although he's a weatherman and a member of the East German Army, he's always devoted himself to sports."

"In 1976, Rosi Mittermaier of West Germany came very close to matching the Olympic triple-gold skiing exploits of Austria's Tony Sailer in 1956 and France's Jean-Cleaude Killy in 1968. At Innsbruck, Mittermaier finished first in the slalom (her specialty) and first in the downhill (her least favorite event). But Canada's Kathy Kreiner prevented Rosi from making a clean sweep of the women's races, edging her out in the giant slalom by just .12 seconds."

"Some 10,000 Austrian fans in the Tyrol spent what was possibly the longest 12 minutes of their lives one icy cold day in February, 1976. They were lined up along the Patscherkofel waiting for their teenage hero, Franz Klammer, who was competing in the Olympic downhill in 15th position. Just minutes before, the partisan crowd had watched 28-year-old Bernhard Russi of Switzerland, wearing No. 3, turn in an excellent time of 1:46.06. Now Klammer was making his descent, and at the halfway point he was clocked at .19 seconds behind Russi. But Klammer pulled out all the stops and managed to beat Russi by .33 seconds. And so it was that six years after becoming the world champion at Val Gardena, Russi bowed to the much younger--and slightly faster--Klammer."

"She mesmerized international audiences with her performances, charming them with the near-sighted squint she needed to read the scores, and the radiant smile she flashed when her marks were high. Dorothy couldn't see more than a few yards without glasses, which led to her characteristic expression and the nickname 'Squint.' But she didn't need perfect vision win the 1976 Olympic and World Championship."

That's all pretty good writing. The cards are pretty great--almost as great as SportscasterCards.com. You should go back to that website and look at it all again. If Putin and the Russians try to take another jab at our president tonight, I just might boycott Sochi 2014 and instead spend the evening browsing SportscasterCards.com myself.

Innsbruck 1976 medals table:

Soviet Union 13 gold, 6 silver, 8 bronze

East Germany 7, 5, 7

United States 3, 3, 4

Norway 3, 3, 1

West Germany 2, 5, 3

Finland 2, 4, 1

Austria 2, 2, 2

Switzerland 1, 3, 1

Netherlands 1, 2, 3

Italy 1, 2, 1

Canada 1, 1, 1

Great Britain 1, 0, 0

Czechoslovakia 0, 1, 0

Liechtenstein 0, 0, 2

Sweden 0, 0, 2

France 0, 0, 1