1992 Albertville Winter Games

The biggest news at the Olympics was the introduction of several new teams because of the political upheavals that had occurred in the past two years. Germany competed as a single team and independent nation for the first time since 1936. Because of the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, competed for the first time since 1936. Two newly independent nations that had been former states of Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia, competed at the Olympics for the first time as independent nations. The Soviet Union, which no longer existed, was represented instead by a team called the Unified Team, representing a portion of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia, Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan made up the states of the Unified Team.

Something else that was new to the Winter Olympics in Albertville was the introduction of a number of new Olympic sports and events to the winter Games. Women competed in biathlon for the first time. Men and women competed in short-track speedskating, skated pack-style indoors. Freestyle skiing, which had been a demonstration sport in 1988, returned with the moguls being a full medal sport. Speed skiing and the other two freestyle disciplines, ballet and aeriels, were demonstration events. Sadly, speed skiing was marred when a worker on the course was killed when struck by a skiier during a training run.

Athletically no single athlete dominated the Winter Olympics. The biggest medal winners were two male cross-country runners from Norway and two female cross-country runners from the Unified Team. Yelena Välbe and Lyubov Yegorova won five medals in the women’s events while Vegard Ulvang and Bjørn Dæhlie won four medals in the men’s events. It was the Olympic début for Dæhlie, who would dominate nordic skiing through the 1998 Winter Olympics. In alpine skiing, the only double gold medalist was Austria’s Petra Kronberger, who won the slalom and the alpine combined.

The five men’s speed skating events went to five different skaters, while in women’s speed skating, America’s Bonnie Blair won both sprints (500, 1,000), and Germany’s Gunda Niemann-Kleeman-Stirnemann won both distance events (3,000, 5,000).

In luge, 1988 silver medalist Georg Hackl won the men’s singles, which would prove to be the first of three consecutive victories in that event for the German. In women’s luge, Austria’s Doris and Angelika Neuner won the gold and silver medals, making them only the second sisters to win the top two places in an individual event. The first were France’s Marielle and Christine Goitschel in 1964 alpine skiing, in both the slalom and giant slalom.