The Winter Olympics were first held in 1924, when 4 sports were included and 14 sets of awards were played. By the end of the last century, the games of the XVIII Winter Olympics were already held in 7 sports, and the number of medal sets played increased to 68. This meeting of the Olympians was held in one of the cities of the central island of Japan.
The last Winter Olympics of the last century could have been held in one of three European cities, American Salt Lake City or Japanese Nagano - five applications for its holding were submitted to the International Olympic Committee. Voting required five rounds, at the end of which, by a slight margin of only four votes out of 88, the Japanese city was ahead. This was the third and so far the last Olympic competition held in the land of the rising sun. Prior to that, Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Games, and in 1972 Sapporo hosted the XI Winter Olympics.
Nagano is a relatively young city, built in 1897 closer to the west coast of the largest of the Japanese islands (Honshu). In 1966, it was enlarged by merging with 8 nearest municipalities and now has almost 400 thousand inhabitants. After the Olympics, in 1999, the city became the administrative center of the prefecture with the same name Nagano. It has a university and a Buddhist center, as well as light industry and mechanical engineering enterprises. To this day, Nagano remains the southernmost capital of the Winter Olympics ever held. To host the Games, the city built the M-Wawe indoor skating rink, the Wakasato multipurpose sports arena and the Aqua Wing indoor ice arena, which was converted into a water sports center at the end of the Olympics.
The XVIII Winter Olympic Games were held in Nagano from February 7 to 22, 1998 and attracted nearly 2,200 athletes from 72 countries. The emperor of Japan Akihito opened the competition, and awards were raffled off in 14 sports. Most of the medals were won by the teams of Germany (29), Norway (25) and Russia (18). Of the 9 highest awards of our team, 5 were won by skiers. In this sport, the advantage of the Russians was absolute - they took all the first places. Three awards of the highest standard were brought to Russia by figure skaters who lost the championship in only one discipline.
