Fri 7 Feb at 20:14 Moscow Time (UTC+4) marks the beginnning of The 2014 Winter Olympics at The Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi, Russia. The closing ceremony takes place on 23 Feb 2014, succeeded by 2014 Winter Paralympics 2014.
More than 2,800 athletes compete in 15 winter sport disciplines and nearly 100 winter sport events, throughout the 17 days of the Games. There are twelve new competitions, accounting for gender; biathlon mixed relay, women's ski jumping, mixed-team figure skating, mixed-team luge, half-pipe skiing, ski and snowboard slopestyle, and snowboard parallel slalom.
This 2014 major multi-sport event, bears little resemblance to the first Winter Olympics, held 90 years ago, guess where? In a popular winter resort in the French Alps... Chamonix Mont-Blanc.
The sporting festival held on 25 January 1924 in Chamonix, gathered 258 athletes, competing in 16 sport disciplines and attracting more than 10,000 spectators over three venues: a 19-turn bobsleigh track, a ski jump and an ice stadium. The ice stadium included two ice hockey rinks, two figure skating rinks, a 400-meter speed skating track and an adjacent curling rink.
The 24' Chamonix event, called the “International Winter Sports Week”, organised by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) intended to be a winter athletic festival, rather than the First Olympics. But the “International Winter Sports Week” was a great succes. Therefore, in 1925 the IOC decided to organise an Olympic Winter Games every four years. The athletic festival held in Chamonix in 1924, was retroactively declared to have been the First Winter Olympics.
