1984 Winter Olympics

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The **1984 Winter Olympics**, officially known as the **XIV Olympic Winter Games** (Serbo-Croatian and Slovene: *XIV. Zimske olimpijske igre*; Cyrillic: XIV Зимске олимпијске игре; Macedonian: XIV Зимски олимписки игри, romanized: *XIV Zimski olimpiski igri*) and commonly known as **Sarajevo 1984** (Cyrillic: Сарајево 1984; Macedonian: Сараево 1984), was a winter multi-sport event held between 8 and 19 February 1984 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (then part of SR Yugoslavia). It was the second consecutive Olympic Games to be held in a socialist state and in a Slavic language-speaking country, after the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Soviet Union. It was also the first Olympics to take place in the Balkans since the first Olympic Games in Athens.

The Games were held in Sarajevo and at resorts in the Dinaric Alps located less than 25 kilometers from the city. At the start of the Games, the sports program was disrupted by weather conditions and the alpine ski races started four days late.

The Games brought together 1272 athletes from 49 countries, which represents a significant increase compared to 1980. Athletes participated in six sports and ten disciplines in a total of thirty-nine official events, one more than the Games four years earlier. Egypt, British Virgin Islands, Monaco, Puerto Rico and Senegal participated for the first time in the Olympic Winter Games. Finland's Marja-Liisa Hämäläinen, won all three individual races in cross-country skiing, won the most medals of the Games. Yugoslavia won the first medal in its history at the Winter Games after skier Jure Franko came second in the giant slalom. East Germany, which won all gold and silver medals in women's speed skating and bobsleigh, finished first on the medal table with twenty-four awards, nine of which were gold. The 1984 Winter Olympics, considered a success, made it possible to modernize Sarajevo and develop winter sports in Yugoslavia, but the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which broke out in 1992 heavily damaged the city and the Olympic facilities. Some sites have been renovated after the war but others remain abandoned.

## History

### **Bidding**

Plan for the Olympic games in Sarajevo can be traced early as 1970. Sarajevo was first considered to hold the Winter Olympic Games in 1976 and 1980 but after modernizing the city within the environment protection framework project, it was finally considered to host the 1984 Winter Olympics. The bid committee was created on 23 November 1977.

**Bid results for the 1984 Winter Olympics**
 Sapporo
 Gothenburg

Two other candidates for the Games were Göteborg in Sweden and Sapporo in Japan. The Gothenburg bid was expensive and there was vast differences in the distances between sites which would require air transport. Sapporo had previously hosted the Games in 1972, only twelve years before the proposed 1984 Games.

The host city for the XIV Olympic Winter Games was announced on 18 May 1978, during the 80th session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Athens, Greece. Sarajevo was selected by a margin of three votes over Sapporo, Japan. Gothenburg became the first Swedish city to lose a Winter Olympics bid; other Swedish cities, such as Falun and Östersund, would later lose consecutive bids to Calgary (1988), Albertville (1992), Lillehammer (1994), Nagano (1998), and Salt Lake City (2002), respectively. Sarajevo, the capital of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, was part of the united Yugoslavia at the time.

### **Organizing**

A provisional organizing committee was created on July 13, 1978 and the final committee with 79 members was formed as April 1980 by the Yugoslav Olympic Committee and the Sarajevo Municipal Assembly. Branko Mikulić, member of the presidency of the central committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, was appointed chairman of the organizing committee. Ahmed Karabegović was appointed the secretary-general and Anto Sučić, then president of the Sarajevo Municipal Assembly, became the president of the executive committee. The organizing committee included the president of the Yugoslav Olympic committee and representatives of the Federal Executive Council, the League of Communists and the Socialist Alliance of the Working People.

### **Development**

The Games were organized in a Communist State but the organizers did not hesitate to partner with capitalist companies to finance the Games. The Organizing Committee argued it was not hypocritical because sport must be above political influence. The organizing committee signed 218 contracts and arrangements in Yugoslavia and 459 on the foreign market. This included the sale of television rights, sponsorship, sale of license rights, free delivery of goods and equipment, advertising, donations as well as Olympic coins, lottery and philately. Marketing brought in 4.31 billion dinars on the national market and 9.42 billion dinars on the foreign market, totaling 13.73 billion of dinars (US$141.65 million). The government also contributed to the financing of the Games: the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina paid 1.83 billion dinars, the Federation of Yugoslavia and the other republics and autonomous regions 0.78 billion and the city of Sarajevo 1 billion. From 1982 to the end of 1984, a deduction made from citizens' salaries (0.2% for citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 0.3% for those of Sarajevo) brought in 1.21 billion.

Building the facilities and purchasing the equipment for the Games cost a total of 8.63 billion dinars. The expenses were listed at 2.26 billion for equipment, 0.97 billion for the Zetra hall, 0.6 billion for the alpine ski slopes, 0.57 billion for the ice rink and the center of Skenderija press, 0.56 billion for the bobsleigh and luge track, 0.4 billion for the speed skating track and 0.34 billion for the ski jumps. The organizing committee also invested 1.65 billion in posts, telegraphs and telephones, the television network, the aerodrome, the road network, 23 stations of sports of winter and sports centers and other facilities. Preparation and organization costs were listed at 4.51 billion dinar.

The region's transport network was developed for the Games. Roads with a total length of 160 kilometers were constructed to improve access to mountain sites from Sarajevo or to link the sites to each other, the city's train station and the Sarajevo International Airport was renovated and a new terminal was built.

Athletes, accompanying persons, officials and visitors arrived in Yugoslavia by regular flights to Zagreb and Belgrade to reach Sarajevo by train or by charters which land directly in Sarajevo. Spectators were transported to the competition venues by coach and a fleet of cars, minibuses and coaches is used for official transport.

The emblem of the 1984 Winter Olympics was a stylized snowflake which also used the national embroidery motif overhung with the Olympic rings. The mascot for the competition was chosen by readers of Yugoslav newspapers from among six entries. The mascot was a wolf named Vučko and created by Slovenian Jože Trobec.

### **Torch relay**

The torch relay for the 1984 Winter Olympics started in Olympia and then proceeded by airplane to Dubrovnik. The total distance of the torch relay through Yugoslavia was 5,289 kilometres (3,286 mi) plus 2,879 kilometres (1,789 mi) of local routes. There were two main routes: one in the west (Split – Ljubljana – Zagreb – Sarajevo), 2,602 kilometres (1,617 mi) in length; and the other in the east (Skopje – Novi Sad – Belgrade – Sarajevo), 2,687 kilometres (1,670 mi) in length. The final torchbearer, from a total of 1,600, was figure skater Sanda Dubravčić, who received the torch from skier runner Ivo Čarman. One of the two original torches is held in a private collection in Žalec, Slovenia. There are also 20 more torches in Greece, owned by individual athletes who were the torchbearers from Ancient Olympia to the nearby military airport and from Athens Domestic Airport to the Panathinaikon Stadium where the Ceremony of handing over the Olympic Flame to the Sarajevo Olympic Games Committee occurred.

## Media

The media played a much larger role at the Games in Sarajevo than at Lake Placid in 1980. More than 3,000 employees of the Yugoslav public broadcaster, Yugoslav Radio Television, produced 204 hours of television broadcasts. The number of countries in which received broadcasts of the games on television increased from 40 to 100 and the broadcasting rights, which were US$20.7 million in 1984, stand at US$102.7 million. Media revenue is shared between the organizing committee which received two-thirds and the IOC which collected one-third. The channel ABC spent US$91.5 million to broadcast the footage in the United States.

The Games were covered by 7,393 representatives of the media from 39 countries: 2,363 journalists from the print media and 5,030 employees television and radio channels. Seven press centers were set up near the various competition venues, the main one being that of Skenderija.

## Highlights

* The Olympic flag was raised upside down during the opening ceremony by mistake.
* First Games under the presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch.
* The 20 kilometre race was added to women's Nordic skiing.
* Skier Jure Franko won Yugoslavia's first Winter Olympic medal; a silver in the giant slalom.
* Marja-Liisa Hämäläinen won all three individual cross-country races for women.
* Gaétan Boucher and Karin Enke each won two gold medals in speed skating, while East German women won all but three out of the twelve medals in the sport.
* Austria, usually a formidable winter sports nation, won only one bronze medal.
* Biathletes Eirik Kvalfoss and Peter Angerer earned a complete set of medals.
* Twin brothers Phil and Steve Mahre took first and second place in the slalom.
* Torvill and Dean of Great Britain earned across-the-board perfect scores for *artistic impression* in the free dance segment of the ice dance competition, a feat that was never matched.
* The gold medals for figure skating were split among four nations: while Torvill and Dean won the ice dance competition for Great Britain, Elena Valova and Oleg Vasiliev of the Soviet Union won the pair skating competition, Scott Hamilton won gold for the United States in the men's singles, and Katarina Witt won the first of two consecutive gold medals for East Germany in the ladies' singles competition.
* Disabled skiing was a demonstration sport for the first time.
* Bill Johnson became the first American to win an Olympic downhill event.
* Lamine Guèye of Senegal was the first Black African skier to compete in the Winter Olympics.
* The closing ceremony was held indoors in the figure skating venue. The next time the closing ceremony for the Winter Games was held indoors was the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 https://digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll8/id/11863
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofmo2004unse
3. ↑ http://www.gamesbids.com/english/archives/past.shtml
4. ↑ http://www.olympic.org/en/lake-placid-1980-olympiques-hiver
5. ↑ http://olympics.time.com/2010/05/21/those-loony-olympic-mascots/slide/vucko-sarajevo-1984/
6. ↑ https://digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll8/id/11863
7. ↑ https://www.olympic.org/news/giant-slalom-star-franko-thrills-yugoslavia
8. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/20/sports/mahre-twins-win-slalom-medals-as-the-olympics-end-in-sarajevo.html
9. ↑ https://www.olympic.org/news/jayne-torvill-and-christopher-dean-perfection-on-ice
10. ↑ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bill-johnson-first-male-skier-outside-alpine-nations-win-olympic-downhill-gold-who-later-crashed-disastrously-a6854626.html