1964 Winter Olympics

IX Olympic Winter Games

Emblem of the 1964 Winter Olympics[a]
Host city	Innsbruck, Austria
Nations	36
Athletes	1,091 (892 men, 199 women)
Events	34 in 6 sports (10 disciplines)
Opening	29 January 1964
Closing	9 February 1964
Opened by	President Adolf Schärf
Cauldron	Josl Rieder
Stadium	Bergisel
Winter ← Squaw Valley 1960 Grenoble 1968 → Summer ← Rome 1960 Tokyo 1964 →

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1964 Winter Olympics Bid process (bid details) Development (venues, torch relay) Marketing Broadcasters Opening ceremony (flag bearers) Chronological summary Medal table (medallists) Olympic records World records Controversies Closing ceremony (flag bearers) IOC ÖOC ICC

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The 1964 Winter Olympics, officially known as the IX Olympic Winter Games (German: IX. Olympische Winterspiele) and commonly known as Innsbruck 1964 (Austro-Bavarian: Innschbruck 1964), was a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Innsbruck, Austria, from January 29 to February 9, 1964. The city was already an Olympic candidate, unsuccessfully bidding to host the 1960 Games. Innsbruck won the 1964 Games bid, defeating the cities of Calgary in Canada and Lahti in Finland. The sports venues, many of which were built for the Games, were located within a radius of 20 km (12 mi) around Innsbruck. The Games included 1,091 athletes from 36 nations, which was a record for the Winter Games at the time. Athletes participated in six sports and ten disciplines which bring together a total of thirty-four official events, seven more than the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. The luge made its debut on the Olympic program. Three Asian nations made their Winter Games debut: North Korea, India and Mongolia.

The Soviet Union broke the record for the most gold and overall medals at a single Winter Olympics, with eleven and twenty five respectively, and finished first in the medal table. The Soviet Union was followed by Austria, the host country, which won twelve medals, four of which were gold. Soviet athletes Lidia Skoblikova won all four women's races of speed skating and Klavdiya Boyarskikh won all three events of cross-country skiing. The Swedish cross-country skier Sixten Jernberg, a three-time medalist at these Games, became the first athlete to achieve nine medals at the Winter Games. In alpine skiing, the French sisters Christine and Marielle Goitschel each obtained a gold and a silver medal. Before the Games, the Austrian army was mobilized to deal with the lack of snow. They brought thousands of cubic meters of it from Brenner Pass, close to the Italian border. The Olympic Winter Games was held a second time in Innsbruck in 1976.

The Olympic Torch was carried by Joseph Rieder,^[1] a former alpine skier who had participated in the 1956 Winter Olympics.

The Games were affected by the deaths of Australian alpine skier Ross Milne and British luge slider Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, during training, and by the deaths, three years earlier, of the entire United States figure skating team and family members.

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