Olympic Winter Games 1960: From remote backwater to a leading ski destination
The VIII Olympic Winter Games put the region of Lake Tahoe, USA, on the world map. Founded in 1949 with only the most basic facilities, it was an outsider in the bidding to host the Olympic Winter Games 1960.
Now merged with the neighbouring ski area of Alpine Meadows, it has become a globally recognised winter sports destination attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year and was recently voted North America’s best ski resort for the third year running by USA Today.
The Games brought increased tourism, commerce and infrastructure developments to the Lake Tahoe area. The village is proud of its Olympic heritage. Plans are in place for the creation of the Sierra Nevada Olympic & Winter (SNOW) Sports Museum, which will aim to showcase the legacy of the 1960 Olympic Winter Games and chart the development of skiing in the Sierra Nevada. Following outreach to Native American groups and the local and extended community, the resort’s leadership decided to drop the offensive term ‘squaw’ from its name. The implementation of the name change occurred after the 2021 winter season.
A thriving and popular ski resort
The resort opened for skiing in 1949, when it had a solitary chair lift, two tow ropes and a 50-room lodge for visitors. Six years later it was bidding to host the VIII Olympic Winter Games, thanks to the vision and drive of its founder. Alexander Cushing saw the Games as an opportunity to establish a world-class ski resort and boost the development of the Lake Tahoe region.
His dream became a reality, and the resort now welcomes 600,000 thousand visitors a year. Boasting an impressive annual snowfall of around 450 inches (11 metres) and a ski area covering 6,000 acres (2,400 hectares), the combined resort has 270 trails and is served by an advanced network of 31 lifts, capable of transporting 72,200 people up the slopes every hour. With its Californian sunshine and long skiing seasons, it has earned the name of the USA’s “Spring Skiing Capital”.
Sporting and technological advances
Though in existence for only three years, the resort’s Olympic Training Centre, which opened in 1977, provided a blueprint for the creation of similar facilities across the United States. The idea behind the centre was to allow top US athletes to train under one roof, in line with new concepts in training, scientific research and sports medicine, all as part of a coordinated programme. The expertise and experience acquired at this pioneering centre laid the basis for the second Olympic Training Centre in Colorado Springs, which opened a year later, in 1978. During its three-year existence around 33,000 athletes from 33 sports used the Squaw Valley centre.
The VIII Olympic Winter Games, which was broadcast live on television across the United States, saw several technological innovations. These included the instant replay, which came about with the help of US broadcaster CBS, and the photo finish, made possible by a special camera that provided a set of frames allowing judges to follow the motion of athletes approaching and crossing the finish line.
In a sign of things to come, computers were also used to calculate times and print out event standings faster than ever before, while advanced electronic timing systems and scoreboards were used in the speed skating competitions. New ice resurfacing machines made rinks slicker than ever before and provided the blueprint for today’s ice resurfacers. There was also innovation on the slopes as French downhiller Jean Vuarnet dispensed with traditional wooden skis to win the men’s gold medal on a ground-breaking riveted aluminium pair.
The venues and their legacies
Six competition venues were used for the 1960 Olympic Winter Games, though only the Alpine skiing slopes still exist today and remain in use. The slopes were built for the Games, along with the Blyth Memorial Arena and the Papoose Peak Olympic Jumping Hill, which were both dismantled around 20 years afterwards. The other three Olympic venues, all temporary, were dismantled right after the Games, as planned in the bid: the East Rink, the Speed Skating Oval and McKinney Creek Stadium.
The women’s slalom and giant slalom courses were used when the resort welcomed the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in 2017, the first time World Cup races had been held at the resort since 1969. Many of the trails at McKinney Creek Stadium – 16 miles to the south of the resort – were restored for public use in 2010, while the resort now has a Nordic centre of its own. Papoose Peak Olympic Jumping Hill is now the site of the Far East Express chairlift, one of the ski resort’s 31 lifts. Blyth Memorial Ice Arena was a much-used skating venue before being demolished as a result of snow damage in 1983, while the Olympic Speed Skating Oval was dismantled after the Games and replaced with a car park that is used by recreational skiers. The Olympic Village built for the 1960 Olympic Winter Games continues to serve the resort as a 90-room hotel.