The 1968 Winter Olympics, officially known as the X Olympic Winter Games (), were a winter multi-sport event held from 6 to 18 February 1968 in Grenoble, France. Thirty-seven countries participated.
The 1968 Winter Games marked the first time the IOC permitted East and West Germany to enter separately, and the first time the IOC ordered drug and gender testing of competitors.
Norway won the most gold and overall medals, the first time since the 1952 Winter Olympics that the Soviet Union did not top the medal table by both parameters.
Host city selection On 24 November 1960, François Raoul, the prefect of the Isère Département, and Raoul Arduin, the president of the Dauphiné Ski Federation, officially presented the idea of hosting the 1968 Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble. After the city council agreed in principle, different government agencies offered their support, and the villages around Grenoble also reacted positively, an application committee was formed and led by Albert Michallon, the former mayor of Grenoble on 30 December 1960. The application was officially given to the IOC during a meeting between IOC executives and representatives of international sport agencies in Lausanne in February 1963. + 1968 Winter Olympics bidding results City Country Round 1 2 3 Grenoble 15 18 27 Calgary 12 19 24 Lahti 11 14 — Sapporo 6 — — Oslo 4 — — Lake Placid 3 — —
In the application, the decision was not solely based on sport, because there had only been two important sport events in the Isère Département: the Bobsleigh World Championships of 1951 in L'Alpe d'Huez and the Luge World Championships of 1959 in Villard-de-Lans. Between 1946 and 1962, the number of inhabitants in Grenoble increased from 102,000 to 159,000, and the total inhabitants in the Département Isère increased from 139,000 to 250,000. The development of the infrastructure could not keep up with this rapid increase, and was, for the most part, at the same level as before World War II. The people who were responsible never made a secret out of it that it was mainly for them about using the Olympic Games to receive larger grants to quickly develop dated infrastructure and support the local economy.
The 61st IOC session, where the awarding of the Olympic Games would have been voted for, would have taken place in Nairobi, Kenya. This session was moved to Baden-Baden, West Germany, because Kenya refused entry to IOC members from Portugal and apartheid South Africa for political reasons. Due to a lack of time, only the 1968 Summer Olympics host city could be voted for. The vote finally took place in Innsbruck on 28 January 1964, a day before the start of the 1964 Winter Olympics. 51 members who were eligible to vote were in attendance and Grenoble were awarded the games after the third round of voting and were competing against Calgary, who were awarded the Games 20 years later.
Organisation
After Grenoble was voted as the host city, the French National Olympic Sports Committee decided the foundation of the organisation committee. The Comité d'Organisation des dixièmes Jeux Olympiques (COJO), the committee for the organisation of the 10th Olympic Winter Games, started to plan the games for the first time on 1 August 1964. Albert Michallon, alongside being the former mayor of Grenoble, was also president of COJO. The upper panel was made up of the general assembly with its 340 members and the supervisory board conduct business with 39 members, 19 of which were appointed and the other 20 were voted for. The general secretary consisted of five main departments and 17 subordinate departments. The number of employees grew to 1920 in February 1968.
The French government played a major role in the preparations for the Games, as president Charles de Gaulle saw an opportunity to present Grenoble as a symbol for a modern France. François Missoffe, Minister for Youth and Sport, formed an interministerial committee for the coordination of the work commissioned by prime minister Georges Pompidou. Over 7000 soldiers of the French armed forces and also employees of the ministries for Youth and Sport, Finance, Social Building, Education, Post, Culture and Transport were employed. The sum of the investments contributed to CNF$1.1 billion Francs (roughly 775 million pounds). The government contributed 47.08%, the Isere Department 3.65%, the city of Grenoble 20.07% and the surrounding communities 1.37%. Different institutions, such as the national train company SNCF; the television broadcaster ORTF; the government housing association and the regional association of hospitals provided the rest of the money.
These means were used accordingly; 465.181 million Francs for the infrastructure of transport and communications, 250.876 million for the Olympic village and press area, 92.517 million for the sports arenas, 57.502 million for television and radio, 45.674 million for culture, 95.116 million for the city's infrastructure and 90.429 million for the running of COJO. They built a new airport, two motorway sections of 7.5 miles and 15 miles, a switchboard, a new town hall, a new police station, a fire station, a hospital with 560 beds, a congress and exhibition centre and a culture palace. They upgraded the access road to the outer sport arenas, an orbital road round Grenoble as well as relocating the rail tracks and removing the level crossings and building a completely new main train station.
To test the new sport complex and to improve organisational processes, they organized "International Sports Weeks". Speed skating competitions and ski races took place from 20 January to 19 February 1967; an ice hockey tournament from 12 to 15 October; and a figure-skating competition from 23 to 25 November.
Torch relay On 16 December 1967, the Olympic torch was lit in Olympia, Greece. The ceremony would have taken place on 13 December, but was postponed due to the attempted coup d'état of King Constantine II, who had been forced from his throne eight months before, against the dictatorial military regime of Georgios Papadopoulos. From there, the flame was run to the Old Olympic Stadium in Athens the torch was flown by an Air France Boeing 707 to the Orly International Airport, where the torch was received by Jean Vuarnet, the 1960 Winter Olympics Downhill Olympic gold medalist, on 19 December, who handed it on to the first torchbearer Alain Mimoun, the 1956 Summer Olympics Marathon Olympic gold medalist.
The torch relay in France went over a distance of 7,222 kilometers through 41 districts and 170 towns to the Isère district. 5,000 torchbearers, who transported the torch on foot, by bike, by boat, by skis or by motorbike, took part in the relay. The first part of the relay was made at the old port of Marseille was done by a diver who, while swimming, held the torch just over the surface of the water. The torchbearers were accompanied by around 80,000 athletes and watched by an audience of about two million people. The last stop on the day before the opening ceremony was Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse. From there, the torch was carried to Grenoble.
The 33 torches that were used in the relay were produced by the Société technique d'équipement, a subsidiary of the Compagnie de Saint-Gobain. They were 70 cm tall, weighed 1750 g, were made of copper and had a propane gas tank. The reserve flames (a cautionary measure in case the torch went out) burned in twenty carbide lamps, the same as the Olympic fire when it was transported from Athens to Paris in a plane.
Visual identity
The logo for the 1968 Winter Olympic Games portrays a floating snow crystal surrounded by three stylised roses on top of the single-coloured (in white) Olympic rings. The roses can be found in the same pattern (two on the top and one below) as Grenoble's emblem.
For the first time, there was an Olympic mascot, although it was unofficial. The mascot was named Schuss, a stylised skier wearing a blue skiing costume and a large red ball as a head. The mascot designed by Aline Lafargue was hardly recognised publicly. It had unofficial character, was marked with great restraint and appeared solely on pins and several toys.
Jack Lesage, a videomaker who specialised in mountain and winter sport recordings, filmed two Olympic advertisements of 15–18 minutes in length before the Olympic Games took place and was contracted by the Organisation Committee. "Trois roses, cinq anneaux" ("Three roses, five rings") emerged in 1966, and showed Grenoble, as well as the surrounding venues, in the early stage of preparation. In 1967, "Vaincre à Grenoble" ("Victory in Grenoble") emerged, and documented the progress of the workers, complemented with images of the sport competitions. Both films appeared in three different versions with French, English and German commentary. In France, the films were shown in cinemas before particular feature films, abroad for receptions and presentations.
The French post office issued six Olympic-themed postage stamps. On 22 April 1967, a label next appeared worth 0.60 francs with the official logo as its motif. On 27 January 1968, ten days before the opening ceremony, a series of five semi-postal stamps followed. The designs were ski jumpers and skiers (0.30++ 0,10 F), ice hockey players (0.40 + 0,10 F), the olympic torch (0.60 + 0.20 F), a female ice skater (0.75 + 0.25 F) and slalom racers (0.95 + 0.35 F). The proceeds from the supplement stamps were split between the French Red Cross and the Organisation Committee.
Highlights and controversies
These were the first Winter Olympics on which doping control tests were performed. Norway won the most medals, 6 gold, 6 silver, and 2 bronze, the first time a country other than the Soviet Union had done so since the USSR first entered the Winter Games in 1956. In the downhill alpine skiing event, the French Jean-Claude Killy navigated the track with a time of 1:59.85 and won the gold medal. Killy also swept the other men's alpine events, winning three gold medals overall, but only after one of the greatest controversies in the history of the Winter Olympics. Austrian superstar Karl Schranz claimed that a mysterious man dressed in black crossed his path during the slalom race, causing him to skid to a halt. Given a restart, Schranz beat Killy's time. However, a Jury of Appeal disqualified Schranz and gave the medal to Killy.Olympic.org In women's luge, there were three East German (GDR) racers Ortrun Enderlein, Anna-Maria Müller, and Angela Knösel in the top 4 after three runs, but they were disqualified when the International Luge Federation (FIL) determined that they had been heating their runners, a banned practice. Italian Erika Lechner, third after three runs, was moved into first place, and won gold after the fourth run was cancelled due to bad weather. West German media alleged race fixing,Der Spiegel 19 February 1968: DDR-Mannschaft: Graue Perlen. while the GDR sports officials blamed the West German Luge Association for staging the incident.Gesellschaft zur Förderung des Olympischen Gedankens in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik: X. Olympische Winterspiele Grenoble 1968. Sportverlag, Berlin, 1968, p. 31 et seq. and p. 165 According to Stasi documents which came to light in 2006, the FIL official who made the decision had allegedly been bribed by the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria to make the allegation.Friedhard Teuffel: Schnee, der auf Kufen schmilzt.MDR: Betrug auf Kufen? – Der Skandal 1968 in Grenoble. The question of whether the GDR lugers really cheated remains unresolved, with some contemporary media in Germany maintaining that the GDR team were unfairly disqualified.Rodel-Olympiasiegerin Müller tot (Focus) , Gestorben: Anna-Maria Müller (Spiegel) Swedish skier Toini Gustafsson was a star in women's cross-country events, winning both individual races and earning a silver medal in the relay.