This was the second time the Games were held in Lake Placid.
First use of artificial snow in Olympic competition.
Although they did not get any medals, the People's Republic of China returned to the Olympics Games after the IOC agreed to designate the ROC "Chinese Taipei".
Ingemar Stenmark won both the giant slalom and the slalom.
Hanni Wenzel won the women's giant slalom and slalom, making Liechtenstein the smallest country to produce an Olympic champion.
Ulrich Wehling of the East Germany and Irina Rodnina won their respective events for the third time.
Aleksandr Tikhonov of the USSR earned his fourth straight gold medal.
Nikolay Zimyatov of the USSR earned three gold medals in cross-country skiing.
Eric Heiden won all 5 speedskating events (500m, 1,000m, 1,500m, 5,000m and 10,000m) he also set 4 olympic records and 1 world record (10,000m).
Robin Cousins won gold for Great Britain in the men's ice skating
An upstart United States ice hockey team, made up primarily of collegiate players, won the gold medal, defeating the heavily favored Soviet team and then Finland in the medal round. Their defeat of the Soviet team in the medal round became known as the "Miracle on Ice" in the US press. A film about the event, called Miracle, was released in 2004.
The winner of the games was the USSR who won 10 golds, 6 silvers and 6 bronz
5 comments:
Well I didn't know that!
I love watching the Olympics and I hope to one day see them in person!! Such excitement when they are going on. It was so interesting reading those facts from the 1980 games...and what a cute little souvenir ducky:-)
Now I'm wondering, what prompted your thinking about the 1980 Olympics?
Patsy, you mentioned on my blog that everyone used to grow gourds by the outhouse.... Is that just because they were not something that you would eat and the ground was fertile? Or was there some other reason?
I had forgotten this was the Eric Heiden and Miracle hockey team Olympics. Thanks for bringing back the memories.
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