1994 Winter Olympics

The XVII Olympic Winter Games were held in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway. Other candidate cities were Anchorage, USA; Östersund/Åre, Sweden; and Sofia, Bulgaria. In 1986 the IOC voted to change the schedule of the Olympic Games so that the summer and winter games would be arranged in alternating even-numbered years. Effectuating this vote, the Lillehammer Games were held in 1994, the only time the winter games have been staged two years after the preceding games.

Highlights

• For the first time, the Winter Olympics were not held in the same year as the Games of the Olympiad.
• The Olympic flame was brought into the stadium by a ski jumper.
• Local hero Johann Olav Koss won three speed skating events, setting three world records.
• Vreni Schneider won a complete set of medals in alpine skiing and Manuela Di Centa medaled in all five cross-country skiing events. Myriam Bédard won both women's individual biathlon races.
• Gustav Weder and Donat Acklin became the first repeat winners of the two-man bobsleigh. Pairs skaters Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov repeated their 1988 Winter Olympics
• A massive Norwegian crowd saw their relay team being beaten by the Italians in the final metres of the cross country skiing relay. The crowd fell silent, but only briefly.
• A month before the games were due to begin, Tonya Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly hired "hit men" to club fellow female figure skater Nancy Kerrigan in the knee. In the end Nancy Kerrigan went on to win the silver medal, behind Oksana Baiul of Ukraine. Tonya Harding finished 8th and was banned from competitive figure skating by the U.S. Figure Skating Association (USFSA) after the games.
• Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, ice dancing champions ten years earlier, competed again following relaxation of amateurism rules. (They had turned professional in the 1980s.)