Text 3. Some points on olympic winter games history

The Winter Olympic Games, the Winter Olympics for short but more correctly The Olympic Winter Games, are the cold-weather counterpart to the Summer Olympic Games. They feature winter sports held on ice or snow, such as ice skating and skiing. The Winter Olympics are held every 4 years.

Prelude

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established in 1894, one of the sports proposed for the programme was ice skating. However, no skating was conducted at the Olympics until the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, which featured four figure skating events. Ulrich Salchow (10-fold World champion) and Madge Syers (the first competitive woman figure skater) won the individual titles with ease.

Three years later, Italian count Eurgenio Brunetta d’Usseaux proposed to the IOC to stage a week with winter sports as part of the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. The organizers opposed this idea, wanting to promote the Nordic Games, a winter sports competition held every four years between competitors from the Nordic countries. However, this same idea was again proposed for the 1916 Games, which were to be held in Berlin. A winter sports week with speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and Nordic skiing was planned, but the 1916 Olympic were cancelled after the outbreakof World War I.

The first Olympics after the war, the 1920 Games in Antwerp again featured figure skating, while ice hockey made its Olympic debut. At the IOC Congress held the next year, it was decided that the organizers of the next Olympics (France) would also host a separate “international Winter Sports Week”, under patronage of the IOC. This week proved a great success, and in 1925 the IOC decided to create separate Winter Olympic Games, not connected to the Summer Olympics. The 1924 events were retroactively designated as the first Winter Olympics at the 1926 IOC Session.

The Olympic Winter Games Sports
Ice sports	Виды спорта на льду
Bobsleigh	Бобслей
Curling	Кёрлинг
Figure skating	Фигурное катание
Ice hockey	Хоккей (на льду)
Luge	Санный спорт, состязания (одиночные сани)
Short track speed skating	Шорт-трек
Skeleton	Скелетон (разновидность санного спорта)
Speed skating	Конькобежный спорт
Snow sports	Виды спорта на снежном покрытии
Alpine	Горные лыжи, горнолыжный спорт
Freestyle skiing	Фристайл
Snowboarding	Сноуборд (вид горнолыжного спорта)
Nordic events	Северные виды спорта
Biathlon	Биатлон (двоеборье: лыжная гонка и стрельба по мишени)
Cross-country skiing	Лыжные гонки
Nordic combined	Лыжное двоеборье (вид лыжного спорта, сочетающий прыжки с трамплина и лыжные гонки)
Ski-jumping	Прыжки с трамплина