1980 Winter Olympics

The XIII Olympic Winter Games were held in 1980 in Lake Placid, New York, United States of America. Another candidate city was Vancouver-Garibaldi , Canada; they withdrew before the final vote.

Contents

1 Highlights

Highlights

The second time the Games were held in Lake Placid.
First use of artificial snow in Olympic competition.
Although they didn't get any medals, the People's Republic of China returned to the Olympics Games after the IOC agreed to designate the ROC "Chinese Taipei".
Ingemar Stenmark won both the giant slalom and the slalom.
Hanni Wenzel won the women's giant slalom and slalom, making Liechtenstein the smallest country to produce an Olympic champion.
Ulrich Wehling of the East Germany and Irina Rodnina won their respective events for the third time.
Aleksandr Tikhonov of the USSR earned his fourth straight gold medal.
Nikolay Zimyatov of the USSR earned three gold medals in cross-country skiing.
Eric Heiden won all five speed skating races.
An upstart United States ice hockey team, made up primarily of collegiate players, won the gold medal, defeating the heavily favored Soviet team and then Finland in the medal round. Their defeat of the Soviet team in the medal round became known as the "Miracle on Ice" in the US press. A film was made in 2004 based on the event called Miracle.

See the medal winners, ordered by sport:

Top medal-collecting nations:
(for the full table, see 1980 Winter Olympics medal count)