The Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998 - the eighteenth in a row - has become truly iconic for world sports. It was on the eve of the Games in Japan that the UN General Assembly in its resolution for the first time in history de facto called on states to suspend not only international, but even internal conflicts. Finally, the unwritten ban on conducting wars at a time when the Olympics was taking place, known even from the annals of Ancient Greece, “earned”.
Nagano - medal standings
The Olympics in Nagano hosted 2338 athletes, of which 810 were women. She became the most massive in the number of participants and countries. In total, athletes from seventy-two countries came to Japan to compete in fourteen sports and sixty-eight disciplines. For the first time, the Nagano Olympics played curling medals: two sets - for men and women. The debut of the Games was for such snowboarding competitions as giant slalom and half-pipe races. Of the seventy-two countries fighting for prizes, only twenty-four achieved success, having received two hundred and five medals.
In the overall classification, the largest number of awards that the Olympics in Nagano won were won by athletes from Germany: they accounted for twenty-nine awards, including twelve gold, nine silver, eight bronze. The second was the Norwegians with twenty-five, and the third were Russians with eighteen medals.
For the first time in Nagano
The last winter games of the century have become a kind of bridge to the future. It was the Nagano Olympics that paved the way for sports such as snowboarding, without which modern world competitions of this scale are hard to imagine, for a somewhat exotic curling and women's light version of hockey. At these games, the valves passed the first test, having a tearing off heel and sending a book of previous records to the archive. Both athletes and spectators were truly struck by the new skates, which were developed by the Dutch and introduced by Canadians. Their idea, like all ingenious, was simple: the creators decided not to fasten the blade tightly to the boot, but vice versa - to make it movable. It was this small revolution that caused all previous records to fall and the tables had to be re-compiled.
For the first time, surprisingly reliable and durable Kevlar equipment was tested on Japanese soil. For two weeks, the public watched the 1998 Olympics in Nagano. Hockey, which was first played by NHL professionals for the first time in the history of the Games, gathered packed stadiums.
The Nagano Olympics was the first to host women’s ice hockey competitions. The Americans became champions, the Canadian team was in second place, and the Finnish team won bronze. The 1998 Games were a step into the future for the White Olympics, the popularity of which from year to year was increasingly inferior to the summer counterpart, and this was largely due to the lack of new types of competitions. However, the prevalence of the debutants still did not reach the point of becoming competitions of such a level. Both the ability to hit the ice target with a bat, and hockey among women, and board skating in the snow were practiced to a greater extent in only a few countries in the world. And their presence at such a large-scale sports forum as the Nagano Olympics was explained, oddly enough, only by its spectacularity.
Mascots of the 1998 Olympics
The wise Japanese chose four “snowlets” as mascots: these were the talismans of the Games, such as the owls of Sukki, Tsukki, Nokki and Lecca. The word snowlets is formed from two roots: snow - "snow", and let's - "let's". And since the Games are held every four years, the mascot consisted of four owls, whose names were chosen from almost fifty thousand ideas and suggestions received from sports fans.
Emblem
No less interesting was the emblem. The Olympics in Nagano was represented by a flower, on the petals of which athletes were depicted - representatives of a winter sport. The emblem was similar to a snowflake that symbolizes the Winter Olympics. And she was associated with a mountain flower. Thus, the Japanese, great environmental lovers, emphasized their respect for nature and environmental issues in Nagano Prefecture. The dynamic look of this colorful and vibrant emblem, according to experts, was a testament to the atmosphere of enthusiasm in which the Games were held, at the same time symbolizing their splendor.
Nagano Olympics - Hockey
The finale of this type of competition was called by the press a "dream tournament." For the first time in the history of the Nagano Olympics winter games, which hockey was also represented by NHL members, the world's strongest players, it was touted by this richest league. Before the start of the Games, the NHL management held three exhibition matches in Japan. This was done in order to instill interest in hockey to the Japanese. After that, according to rumors, the impressionable Asians - the hosts of the Olympics - literally “fell ill” with a game with a puck and a club. And although they understood the rules with great difficulty, the atmosphere at the stadium was very effectively maintained.
The NHL leadership understood that the participation of stars of this magnitude would once again advertise this overseas championship. In addition, it seemed to the Americans and Canadians that they would be able to repeat the 1996 World Cup finals, and it was they who would meet in the final match. However, thanks to the Czechs, the North American “masters” of ice left Nagano without even winning the “bronze”. And Russia and the Czech Republic reached the final. However, our compatriots did not succeed in “finalizing” the Hasek gate in the final match. Moreover, in the third period, the Russians missed a rather offensive puck, and as a result won silver medals.
The success of Russian athletes
It is known that cross-country skiing is the main one in the Winter Olympics. And therefore, they always receive great attention. In 1998, Larisa Lazutina, already a two-time Olympic champion in relay races, won the silver award in the individual race for fifteen kilometers in the classical style. Gold was received by her compatriot Olga Danilova. The team of Russian girls - N. Gavrilyuk, O. Danilova, E. Vyalbe and L. Lazutina - again pleased their fans, winning the relay 4 by 5 kilometers.
The Bure brothers, Aleksey Zhamnov, Aleksey Yashin, Sergey Gonchar, Andrey Kovalenko, and also Sergey Fedorov came to defend the honor of Russian sports. With these guys, Fuji was on the shoulder, and the Sea of Japan was knee-deep, and the forces of the Nagano Olympics. Figure skating was represented by a fairly powerful team, but the audience was most struck by the surprisingly complex and clean program of Ilya Kulik, who won the “gold”.
Interesting Facts
Not without scandals at the Olympic Games in 1998. Frustrated by their failure, the players of the American hockey team made a brawl, breaking furniture in their rooms in the sports village, thereby causing the organizers of the competition not only material, but also moral damage.
Surprisingly, the most “Russian” among all the teams in Nagano was the national team of Kazakhstan. The Russian team consisted of one Ukrainian and one Lithuanian each, while this Central Asian country sent only ethnic Russians to the Games.
The main surprise of the Nagano competition was the five-magnitude earthquake that occurred on February 20th. Fortunately, none of the participants and spectators were injured. In ice dancing, two-time Olympic champions were Oksana Grischuk with Evgeny Platov from Russia. And only after the last victorious performance it became clear that the partner was dancing with a broken wrist.
Closing the Olympics
The farewell ceremony with the Games, as well as the opening, was accompanied by fireworks. It was a salute of rare beauty - five thousand high-altitude charges took off into the evening sky in just eight minutes. Participants say that the Winter Olympics in Nagano, one of the most emotional in the history of the World Games, also flew by in passing. Competitions of this magnitude took place in Japan, and simply could not help but amaze with scientific and technological innovations worthy of the coming twenty-first century. The land of the rising sun has repeatedly struck the world with its technologies, and the 1998 Olympics in Nagano was no exception.