1976 Innsbruck, Austria
The Austrian resort town gets the Games again
Last Updated: Friday, December 18, 2009 | 3:33 PM ET
CBC Sports
Winter Olympics, Innsbruck. A view of the ski-jumping competition at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck. Austria. (Allsport Hulton/Archive/Getty Images)
The face of Winter Olympic history would look different if the original plans for the 1976 Games came to fruition. Denver initially earned the right to host the Games with the event set to celebrate the state of Colorado’s 100th birthday and America’s bicentennial.
But many Denver residents worried about the taxpayer cost of building new sports facilities and the potential for both environmental damage and a population boom. The issue was settled in a state referendum in which 62 per cent of voters opted against using public funds for the Games. Without government money, the Denver Olympic Organizing Committee was forced to withdraw as host.
The IOC executive board held an emergency meeting and elected to move the Winter Games to Innsbruck, an Austrian resort town already outfitted with world-class venues from hosting the 1964 Games.
With the location issue settled, the Games began Feb. 4 with unseasonably warm weather causing poor snow conditions and a flu epidemic raging through the Olympic village.
Sickness claimed its first victim when eight-time Olympic medallist Galina Koulakova of the Soviet Union was disqualified from the five-kilometre cross-country event for using nasal spray to combat a cold. However, Koulakova was reinstated for the 10-kilometre and 4x5km events, winning bronze and gold medals.
Before the Games ended, German fans were gripped by a more benign kind of illness –"Rosi" fever. Alpine skier Rosi Mittermaier entered the Olympics without ever winning a World Cup downhill in her 10-year career. When the 25-year-old claimed gold in downhill and slalom, she became the favourite in win gold in the giant slalom. But a skier from Timmins, Ont., spoiled Mittermaier’s bid for an Alpine grand slam.
On the ice, a new star was born. Figure skater Dorothy Hamill rocketed to fame in the U.S. by winning gold in the women’s competition. The sport was also the scene of the newest Olympic discipline – ice dancing – where Soviet pair Ludmilla Pakhomova and Aleksander Gorshkov claimed the first gold medal.
John Curry
Figure skater John Curry training at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. (Tony Duffy/Allsport/Getty Images)Like Toller Cranston, British figure skater John Curry saw a place for artistic expression at a time when most in the sport heavily emphasized technical skills. Curry, a lifelong ballet enthusiast, viewed figure skating as an art as well as a sport and likened his graceful style to that of innovative skating legend Gillis Grafstrom. Unfortunately, many figure skating judges did not see eye to eye with Curry and often penalized him for his "feminine" style.
For the 1976 Olympics, Curry, who carried the British flag at the opening ceremonies, decided to meet his critics halfway, adding a series of athletic jumps to his silky repertoire. In turn, the judges finally embraced Curry, awarding him 105.9 of a possible 108 points and a gold medal. The near-perfect score is still the highest awarded in the history of men’s figure skating.
Curry remained in the public eye in Britain after the ’76 Games, though not always for the right reasons. The British press hounded him about his sexual orientation and he was once attacked in the street by an unidentified assailant. These troubles contributed to Curry’s decision to return to the United States, where he had trained during his skating career.
In 1990 Curry developed AIDS and returned to Britain to live with his mother. Four years later, weakened by the disease, Curry died of a heart attack at the age of 44.
Advanced technology
Sports technology also made headlines in Innsbruck. Innovations crossed over into Alpine skiing, speed skating and ski jumping.
Star Austrian skier Franz Klammer brought skis with perforated tips intended to lessen wind resistance, but officials disapproved of his new equipment. Under intense pressure stirred by the controversy and fierce home-country expectations, Klammer used his old skis to claim a gold medal with an electrifying downhill run.
Austrian athletes also created a buzz on the ski jump hill. The team was already famous for their balloon suits, which were supposed to increase air lift. In Innsbruck, the Austrians continued their innovative ways by introducing a streamlined helmet, which, like Klammer’s skis, was intended to reduce wind resistance. Officials approved the helmets for competition and Austrians Karl Schnable and Toni Innauer leapt to gold and silver, respectively.
Swiss speed skater Franz Krienbuehl revolutionized speed skating by showing up with a sleek hooded suit. Krienbuehl failed to win a medal, but his new attire now is commonplace in speed skating.
Canada's performance
Not too many people gave Kathy Kreiner a chance to win the Olympic giant slalom. The Timmins, Ont., native was in the midst of a poor World Cup season, and West Germany’s Rosi Mittermaier appeared poised to claim her third victory of the Games.
The race was run in cloudy conditions with light snowfalls, and the course became more challenging when mild temperatures produced icy patches.
Kreiner shocked the field by completing a near-perfect run and racing to a temporary lead with Mittermaier yet to ski. The German champ burst out of the starting gate, building a half-second lead over the surprising Canadian, but a gate error caused Mittermaier to lose time. She crossed the finish line in second place, 12 hundredths of a second behind Kreiner. The 18 year-old’s win was so unexpected that only one Canadian reporter was on hand for the event.
Canada also surprised in speed skating. Calgary’s Cathy Priestner won a silver medal by placing second in the 500-metre speed skating event. Priestner trailed only Sheila Young of the U.S.
Figure skater Toller Cranston added to the Canadian medal haul in Innsbruck. The six-time Canadian men’s champion was an innovator in artistic skating. He refused to follow the rigid rules of traditional figure skating style, a sport that at the time favoured controlled movement over artistic expression.
Cranston skated to a ninth-place finish four years earlier in Sapporo, calling the judging a "joke." But a competition format change worked to Cranston’s advantage in Innsbruck.
Prior to 1976, skating competitions were judged 50 per cent on compulsory figures and half on a free skate. The heavy emphasis on technical skills hurt the podium chances of strong free skaters and held back the viewer-friendly potential of the sport. The International Figure Skating Federation (IFSF) introduced a short compulsory program in Innsbruck to coincide with the long freestyle program, thus reducing the weighting of the compulsories.
Cranston, the flamboyant native of Swastika, Ont., benefited from the format change and won a bronze medal behind Britain’s John Curry and Vladimir Kovalev of the Soviet Union.
Cranston’s legacy in figure skating lore runs deeper than his Innsbruck performance. The appeal of this new artistic skating style, adopted by Cranston among others, proved so great in the years to follow that the IFSF eventually eliminated compulsory figures from skating competitions in 1990.
| Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Soviet Union | 13 | 6 | 8 | 27 |
| 2. East Germany | 7 | 5 | 7 | 19 |
| 3. United States | 3 | 3 | 4 | 10 |
| 4. West Germany | 2 | 5 | 3 | 10 |
| 5. Norway | 3 | 3 | 1 | 7 |
| 11. Canada | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
