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History of the Winter Olympic Games Athlete Villages

Information about the athlete villages of the Winter Olympic Games

In the early days of the modern Olympics, athletes generally had to find and pay for their own hotel accommodation around the host city. As the number of athletes increased, so did the demand for housing. The first Olympic Village built was for the athletes of the 1924 Summer Olympics (see all Summer Olympics Athlete Villages). The first known Winter Olympic Games athlete village wasn't until Oslo in 1952. Up until then, there was less need for an Olympic Village for the Winter Olympics as there were fewer athletes attending, and they generally stayed in existing hotels in the host town or nearby.

Also, in mountainous regions in which the Winter Olympics are traditionally held, there is obviously less land available to build a custom athlete village. As the size of the Winter Olympic Games events have grown, the need for an athlete village has also increased, with more and more facilities required to cater to the large number of athletes and officials.

List of Athlete Villages

• 1924 Chamonix — the 258 athletes stayed in the Majestic Hotel and the Chamonix Palace in the French village of Chamonix.
• 1928 St. Moritz — 464 athletes stayed in hotels in St. Moritz Bad.
• 1932 Lake Placid — the 252 athletes stayed in hotels in Lake Placid and surrounding areas.
• 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen — 646 athletes from 28 nations stayed in hotels in Garmisch-Partenkirchen
• 1940, 1944 no event
• 1948 St. Moritz — 669 athletes were again put up in hotels in St. Moritz Bad.
• 1952 Oslo — 694 athletes were accommodated in a newly built accommodation in three locations around Oslo; Sogn, Ullevål and Ila, with capacity for 600, 400 and 200 people respectively. The largest in Sogn comprised six three-story buildings with 363 apartments. At Ullevål, there were 256 bedrooms in two eight-story buildings. At each site there was a post office, telephones, a laundry service, banks, kiosks, hairdressers, and sports equipment maintenance and sales.
• 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo — There were 821 athletes from 32 nations, which were accommodated in hotels in Cortina and Misurina.
• 1960 Squaw Valley — Four identical three-story buildings were built, each with 75 bedrooms, with a total capacity of 1,200 people. One was for the women athletes. They were located in Squaw Valley itself, just five minutes walk from all the competition venues except the biathlon and cross-country skiing. Two of these still stand, having been modified into condominiums. There were other buildings for additional facilities, such as the Athletes' Centre with a 900-seat dining hall.

1960 Squaw Valley Athlete Village

• 1964 Innsbruck — A new build in Neu-Arzi, four 10-storey buildings which accommodated 1400 athletes and officials. The services included a clothes repair service, banking services, a tea room and a hairdresser's. Also, about 650 athletes and officials stayed in hotels in Seefeld.
• 1968 Grenoble — A new build in Grenoble which accommodated 2000 athletes and officials. Two secondary Villages were established in the resorts of Autran and Chamrousse for the athletes competing in the Nordic and Alpine events, with 650 and 350 beds each.
• 1972 Sapporo — A single village was created in Makomanai, which accommodated 2,300 athletes and officials. The village was built in a residential area about 6.5km south of the city center. All competition venues were within easy reach, the furtherest was 32km away.
• 1976 Innsbruck — A new build in Neu-Arzi which accommodated 2000 athletes and officials was built right next to the one for the 1964 Games. The Village consisted of 35 residential buildings with 642 apartments. Like in 1964, there was also accommodation for some athletes in Seefeld.
• 1980 Lake Placid — Accommodation for 2000 beds was built in Ray Brook, New York State, on the site of a former sanatorium. It was built with the intention to become a Federal Prison FCI Ray Brook. The Olympic Village included a post office, a bank, a chapel, meditation rooms, a library, two 350-seat cafeterias, a polyclinic, shops, a cinema, a disco and a theatre for up to 300 people.
• 1984 Sarajevo — There was accommodation built in Mojmilo with 1950 beds, and another in Igman with 500 beds. The apartment buildings are now used as condominiums and tourist facilities.
• 1988 Calgary — The athletes were accommodated on the campus of the University of Calgary. The athlete's village consisted of the existing Kananaskis, Rundle, Castle, Norquay and Brewster buildings, as well as the newly constructed Glacier and Olympus buildings. These buildings are still student accommodation. An additional 600 athletes were accommodated at Canmore.
• 1992 Albertville — The majority of the athletes and officials stayed in hotels in Brides-les-Bains, about 20 km from Albertville, with additional accommodation in Val-d'Isere, Les Saisies, La Plagne, La Tania and Tignes.
• 1994 Lillehammer — The village comprised wooden cottages built on a west-facing slope just to the north of Lillehammer in Skårsetlia, and took its form from the old farms of Gudbrandsdal. 2650 athletes and officials were accommodated in Skårsetlia, with an additional 550 people involved with the skating events staying in Hamar in the Toneheim District College, in an already existing boarding school for music students.
• 1998 Nagano — The village is located in Imai, about 7km southwest of Nagano Station. There were 1032 apartments in 22 buildings, capable of accommodating over 3,000 people. Other accommodation sites, using existing hotels, were located in Karuizawa and Shiga Kogen. Karuizawa, about 70 kilometers southeast of Nagano City, was the site for the curling competition. The accommodation in Shiga Kogen was for the snowboarders.
• 2002 Salt Lake City— The 2,399 athletes stayed in student housing at the University of Utah, Fort Douglas. The accommodation was mostly newly built for the Olympics, and it is still used as student housing today.
• 2006 Turin — The three main Olympic Villages were located in the city of Turin and in the towns of Bardonecchia and Sestriere.

2010 Vancouver Athlete Village

• 2010 Vancouver — There were two main athlete villages, the Vancouver Olympic Village and Whistler Olympic and Paralympic Village, each accommodating about 2,800 athletes and officials.
• 2014 Sochi — There were two Athlete Villages, a 'coastal' village in Imeretinsky (Rosa Khutor) Sochi, and another 'mountain' village in Krasnaya Polyana, 49km away from each other. The main Sochi Olympic Village was built as part of the Olympic Park, and was within walking distance to the grouped nearby venues.
• 2018 PyeongChang — The main Olympic village was built in Pyeongchang, with a Coastal Village at Gangneung. The athletes competing in the snow sports and bobsleigh, luge and skeleton stayed in PyeongChang, with the ice sports athletes in Gangneung.
• 2022 Beijing — As the Beijing Olympic Village from 2008 has been occupied by fixed residents, there was a need to build a second village on a smaller scale for the Winter Olympics nearby on the Olympic Green. There are also athlete villages built in the other sporting cluster sites, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou.
• 2026 Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo — There will be athlete villages constructed at three sites: Milan, Cortina D'Ampezzo and Livigno. In Milan, a zero-impact Olympic Village will be built on the site of a disused Porta Romana railway yard. Afterwards, the village will be converted into accommodation for approximately 1,000 students.

References

• Krieger, J. and Von Wagner, C. (2014) The transformation of the Olympic Village at the Olympic Winter Games: a historical analysis (Chapter 58, pp. 303-322). In, Palmer, C. (Ed.) The sports monograph: critical perspectives on socio-cultural sport, coaching and Physical
  Education. SSTO Publications, Preston, UK. ISBN:978-0-9566270-6-3
• Olympic Summer Games Villages from Paris 1924 to Rio 2016. OSC REFERENCE COLLECTION, The Olympic Studies Centre. Jan 2018.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Village

Related Pages

• Summer Olympics Athlete Villages
• Winter Olympic Games Stadiums
• Winter Olympic Games host countries
• Winter Olympics History
• Olympic Village Dining Halls and food provision

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