In 1972, for the first time, the Olympic Games were held outside the United States and Europe. The capital of the XI Winter Olympic Games was the Japanese city of Sapporo. The games were held from 3 to 13 February.
Japan did not claim to be the leading sports power at the time. Therefore, the main goal of the Japanese Olympic Committee was to demonstrate the country's social and economic achievements in the post-war years. Over 4,000 journalists have received accreditation for the games. This was the first Olympiad record.
Sapporo had already won the right to host the Olympics in 1940, but due to the war with China, the Japanese Olympic Committee abandoned this honorable mission. The Olympic Games returned to Japan after 32 long years. Athletes from 35 countries took part in the 1972 competition, a total of 1006 athletes participated. For the first time, athletes from such a non-winter country as the Philippines competed in the games.
In Sapporo, 35 sets of awards were played in 10 sports disciplines. The first place in the unofficial medal standings was confidently taken by the USSR team. Soviet athletes won 16 medals, including 8 gold. The second place, unexpectedly for many, was taken by the GDR national team, which participated in the winter games for the second time in the history of this country.
The heroine of the Olympics was skier Galina Kulakova, who won three Olympic gold medals at the same games (distances of 5 and 10 km and relay race 4x7, 5 km). Another hero was the Dutchman Ard Skhkenk. He won three gold medals in speed skating (1500m, 5000m and 10000m). Later, a tulip variety was named in his honor in Holland.
At the Olympics in Sapporo, the great figure skater Irina Rodnina became the Olympic champion for the first time. Then she skated in tandem with Alexei Ulanov. The second place in the pair competition was also taken by Soviet athletes, they were Lyudmila Smirnova and Andrei Suraikin.
The performances of the Japanese jumpers became a real sensation. The Japanese, who did not count on much success, took the entire podium in jumping from a seventy meter springboard. But before that, the Japanese team had only one silver Olympic medal, won at the 1956 games in Cortino d'Ampezzo.
The Sapporo Winter Games were marked by the fight against "professionalism" in the Olympic movement. Austrian skier Karl Schranz was suspended from the competition. This is the second time he has suffered. The first time he was stripped of his Olympic gold medal at the 1968 Games in Grenoble. Schranz was punished for contracts with sponsors and advertising for sportswear manufacturers. In those years, it was believed that money had no place in amateur sports.
It was the confrontation between professionals and amateurs that caused the Canadian ice hockey team to boycott the games in Sapporo. Canadian hockey players insisted on granting NHL athletes the right to participate in the Olympics, pointing out that Soviet hockey players are amateurs only on paper. But their request was not satisfied, as a result, the founders of ice hockey refused to take part in the competition altogether. The hockey players of the USSR became the winners, the Americans took the second place, and the athletes of Czechoslovakia won the bronze.
Interesting fact: during the rehearsal for the opening of the games, one of the spectators drew the organizers' attention to the wrong arrangement of the rings on the Olympic flag. According to the rules, the rings are arranged in the following order: blue, yellow, black, green, red. It turned out that the wrong flag had been flown at all Winter Games since 1952. And nobody noticed the mistake.
