1984 Winter Olympics - Highlights

Highlights

• The Olympic flag was raised upside down during the opening ceremony by mistake.
• First Games under the presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch.
• The 20 kilometre race was added to women's Nordic skiing.
• Skier Jure Franko won Yugoslavia's first Winter Olympic medal; a silver in the giant slalom.
• Marja-Liisa Hämäläinen won all three individual cross-country races for women.
• Gaétan Boucher and Karin Enke each won two gold medals in speed skating, while East German women win all but three out of the twelve medals in the sport.
• Austria, usually a formidable winter sports nation, won only one bronze medal.
• Biathlete Eirik Kvalfoss earned a complete set of medals.
• Twin brothers Phil and Steve Mahre took first and second place in the slalom.
• Torvill and Dean of the United Kingdom earned across-the-board perfect scores for artistic impression in the free dance ice dancing competition, a feat that was never matched.
• The Gold medals for Figure Skating were split among four nations. While Torvill and Dean won the Ice Dancing Competition for the UK, Elena Valova and Oleg Vasiliev of the Soviet Union won the Pairs Competition, Scott Hamilton scored Men's Gold for the United States, and Katarina Witt won the first of two consecutive Gold Medals for East Germany in Ladies Figure Skating.
• Disabled skiing was a demonstration sport for the first time.
• Bill Johnson became the first American to win an Olympic downhill event.
• Lamine Guèye of Senegal was the first Black African skier to compete in the Winter Olympics.
• The closing ceremony was held indoors in the figure skating venue. The next time the closing ceremony for the Winter Games would be held indoors was the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.