The
2006 Winter
Olympics, officially known as the XX Olympic
Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in
Turin
, Italy
from
February 10, 2006, through February 26, 2006. This marked the second
time Italy hosted the
Olympic Winter Games, the first being the VII Olympic Winter Games in Cortina
d'Ampezzo
in
1956. Italy also hosted the Games of the XVII Olympiad in Rome
in
1960. Turin was selected as the host city for the 2006 games
in 1999.
The official logo displayed the name "Torino", the
Italian name of the city; the city is known
as "Turin" in both
English and the
local traditional dialect,
Piedmontese. The
Olympic mascots of
Torino
2006 were Neve ("snow" in
Italian), a
female
snowball, and Gliz, a
male ice cube. The official
motto of the XX Olympic Winter Games was "Passion lives
here".
Turin, with a metropolitan area of 1.7 million, was the largest
city to have ever hosted a Winter Olympics.
The title will fall to
Vancouver
, British
Columbia
, Canada
, (2.5
million) when that city hosts the XXI Olympic Winter Games.
Host selection process
Turin was
chosen as the host of the Olympics in 1999 at Seoul
, Korea
in the 109th
IOC Session. This was just after
the IOC
had adopted new election procedures during the
108th Extraordinary IOC Session in light of the corruption scandals
surrounding the votes for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics. Since IOC
members were forbidden to visit the candidate cities (in the
interests of reducing bribery), the 109th IOC Session elected a
special body, the Selection College, to choose finalist cities from
the pool of candidate cities after each had made their final
presentations to the full IOC Session; the full IOC Session then
voted on the cities chosen as finalist cities by the Selection
College.
Although six cities launched candidacies and
made presentations to the full IOC Session in Seoul in June
1999, the Selection College chose only two cities to go forward to
be voted upon by the full IOC Session: Sion
and Turin.
The
candidacies of Helsinki
, Finland
; Poprad-Tatry
, Slovakia
; Zakopane
, Poland
; and
Klagenfurt
, Austria
were dropped
by the Selection College after all six candidate cities made their
candidate presentations to the full session.
The selection of Turin over Sion came as a surprise, since Sion was
the overwhelming favorite. Media speculation was that the choice of
Turin was due to the combination of four factors: Turin's
overwhelming population size difference (Turin had a population 1.5
million, whilst Sion's was only 27,000), the skills of the Italian
bid team, the IOC's desire to compensate Italy for the recent
selection of Athens over Rome for the
2004 Summer Olympics, and finally a way
to retaliate against Switzerland for the
whistleblower role played by IOC member
Marc Hodler in the revelation of the
2002 corruption
scandal.
The information below comes from
the
International Olympic Committee Vote History web page.
| 2006 Winter Olympics Bidding Results |
| City |
NOC Name |
Round 1 |
| Turin |
|
53 |
| Sion |
|
36 |
Sports
The Games featured 84 medal events in 15 disciplines grouped over 7
sports. Events that made Olympic debut in Turin included mass start
biathlon, team sprint cross country skiing, snowboard cross and
team pursuit speedskating. The classical men's 50 km and
women's 30 km distances, which were held at the
previous Winter Games in 2002, were not
held in these Games, as these events were alternated with freestyle
events of the same distances; In fact, most of the cross country
skiing events at these Games involved different distances from
those in Salt Lake City.
The following are the disciplines that were contested at the games.
The numbers in parentheses after each sport discipline indicate the
number of events contested.
Medal table
2006 Olympics logo on display in Turin
To sort this table by nation, total medal count, or any other
column, click on the icon next to the column title.
| 1 |
|
11 |
12 |
6 |
29 |
| 2 |
|
9 |
9 |
7 |
25 |
| 3 |
|
9 |
7 |
7 |
23 |
| 4 |
|
8 |
6 |
8 |
22 |
| 5 |
|
7 |
10 |
7 |
24 |
| 6 |
|
7 |
2 |
5 |
14 |
| 7 |
|
6 |
3 |
2 |
11 |
| 8 |
|
5 |
4 |
5 |
14 |
| 9 |
|
5 |
0 |
6 |
11 |
| 10 |
|
3 |
2 |
4 |
9 |
| 10 |
|
3 |
2 |
4 |
9 |
|
Highlights
Opening Ceremony
Stefania Belmondo, a 10-time
Olympic medalist in
cross-country
skiing, lit the
Olympic Flame
during the
opening
ceremony on
10 February. Before
that, the ceremony celebrated the best of Italy and Sport including
a segment honoring the
Alps. The FilmMaster
Group K-events created and produced the Opening and Closing
Ceremonies of the XX Winter Olympic Games in Turin in 2006.
Executive Producer Marco Balich, Content Supervisor Alfredo
Accatino, Art Direction Lida Castelli.
Day 1
The first gold medal of the 2006 Games was awarded in the 20
kilometre
biathlon, won by
German Michael Greis on the first day of competition.
Ice hockey began with the women's competition;
Sweden defeated
Russia 3-1 in the first
match while
Canada's team opened with
the most lopsided win in Olympic history by beating the host
Italians
16-0.
Day 2
On
12 February,
Latvia won its first
winter Olympic medal when
Mārtiņš Rubenis took the
bronze in the men's luge.
Armin
Zöggeler's win in that event gave Italy its first gold medal of
the Games. Both the Canadian and
American women's
ice hockey teams posted their second straight shutout wins.
Day 3
Chinese figure
skating pair
Zhang Dan and
Zhang Hao, trailing a dominant
Russian pair, attempted a
throw quadruple
salchow jump—an element
which had never been successfully completed in competition. Zhang
Dan fell, injuring her knee, but the pair finished their program to
a standing ovation and took the silver medal. Russia finished the
third day of competition with two gold medals, as did the United
States.
Day 4
The fourth day saw the two North American women's hockey teams
finish out pool play with their third win each.
Evgeni Plushenko of Russia set a world
record score in the men's figure skating short program; his 90.66
points was more 10 points better than the nearest opponent's score.
The men's combined
alpine skiing was
riddled with disqualifications, including front-runners
Bode Miller and
Benjamin Raich. American
Ted Ligety won the event in what was considered
an upset.
Day 5
Canada had another strong day on
15
February, setting new Olympic records in both men's and women's
pursuit team speed skating events as well as opening the men's ice
hockey competition with a win against Italy. Italy finished the day
with the men's pursuit team Olympic record, however, after the
Netherlands
bettered Canada's time only to have Italy improve upon theirs.
China won its first gold of 2006 with
Wang Meng's victory in the women's
individual 500 metre short track speed skating. A pair of
Austrian brothers won
the men's doubles luge while
Michaela Dorfmeister gave the nation
another championship in the women's downhill.
Day 6
Kristina Šmigun won her second
gold medal of the Games with a victory in the women's 10 kilometre
classical
cross-country
skiing on
16 February, remaining the
only
Estonian to
medal. In men's
curling action,
Great Britain
edged
Germany
7-6,
Switzerland kept
New Zealand
winless by winning 9-7,
Canada beat
Norway 7-6, and the
United
States defeated
Sweden, 10-6.
Day 7
On
February 17,
Tanja Frieden of
Switzerland took the
gold in women's snowboard cross after
Lindsey Jacobellis of the United States
fell on the second-to-last jump while performing an unnecessary
method grab. Jacobellis settled for silver, while
Canada's
Dominique Maltais took bronze after
recovering from a crash.
Duff Gibson of
Canada took gold
in the
skeleton
just ahead of fellow Canadian
Jeff Pain,
becoming the oldest individual gold medalist in Winter Olympics
history. In the women's ice hockey semifinals, the United States
lost a shootout to Sweden, marking the first time in international
competition that the United States had lost to anyone other than
Canada (Canada's win maintained its record of never having lost to
anyone other than the United States).
Day 8
Kjetil André Aamodt won
gold for
Norway
in the men's Super G on
18 February,
beating
Hermann Maier of
Austria.
Germans Kati Wilhelm and
Martina Glagow finished first and second in
the 10 kilometre biathlon pursuit. The host Italians defeated
Canada in men's curling, while Switzerland did the same in men's
ice hockey to put the Canadians on the wrong end of two major
upsets in the same day. The United States men's ice hockey team
suffered its first loss of the tournament as
Slovakia and Russia
continue their dominance of the pool.
Day 9
Lascelles Brown became the first Jamaican
-born competitor to win a medal at the Winter
Olympics on 19 February, competing on
the Canadian 2-man bobsleigh team which finished second in an
extremely tight competition. The German pair was only .21
seconds ahead of the Canadians, themselves only .14 ahead of the
Swiss team. Finland continued to be unbeaten in men's ice hockey,
handing Canada its second loss.
The day also saw the most hyped event of these games, at least in
Europe, as the Men's 10k Cross Country Relay was scheduled. The
battle stemmed from the
Lillehammer games 12 years ago in which
Italy out-dueled Norway in that very same event. To that extent,
many Norwegians wanted to win this event in order to embarrass the
Italians on their home turf, but it was not to be as Italy crushed
the field winning over Germany by over 15 seconds to take their 5th
straight gold in this event. Norway failed to medal for the first
time since 1988.
Day 10
The final day of curling pool play was
20
February; Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Canada advanced to
the women's semifinals while Finland, Canada, the United States,
and Great Britain qualified in the men's competition. Austria took
their first team gold medal in ski jumping, while Canada took their
second in women's ice hockey to take a 2-1 lead over the United
States in all-time Olympic championships.
Day 11
Slovakia and Finland both won their final men's ice hockey games on
21 February to win their respective
pools with 5-0-0 records.
Enrico
Fabris gave the host nation another gold medal in speed skating
by winning the men's 1500 metres.
Day 12
On
22 February, the twelfth day of
competition,
Anja Pärson won her
first gold medal in the women's slalom; it was her fifth overall
Olympic medal and third of the 2006 Games.
Chandra Crawford took a quicker route to
the top of the podium, winning the 1.1 kilometre cross-country
sprint gold in her Olympic debut. In the men's ice hockey
quarterfinals, the previously undefeated Slovakians lost to the
Czech Republic while Russia, Finland, and Sweden eliminated Canada,
the United States, and Switzerland, respectively.
Philipp Schoch successfully defended his
snowboarding giant slalom gold against his brother
Simon.
Day 13
Sweden took the women's championship in the curling finals held on
23 February.
Shizuka Arakawa gave Japan its first gold
medal of the Games and first figure skating gold medal, winning the
ladies' figure skating competition in part by being able to finish
without falling, as
Sasha Cohen and
Irina Slutskaya both tumbled. Russia
wrested the gold medal in women's team biathlon from two-time
defending champions Germany.
Day 14
February 24 was the day of the men's
curling finals, in which Canada won its first gold medal and the
United States won its first medal in the sport as Canada defeated
Finland and the United States beat Great Britain for the second
time. The figure skating gala was also held, with top placers in
all of the events performing exhibitions. Sweden and Finland won
their men's ice hockey semifinal games, defeating the Czech
Republic and Russia.
Day 15
The Austrians swept the men's alpine slalom medals on
25 February, led by
Benjamin Raich. Germany took gold medals in
the men's 15 kilometre biathlon and the men's individual bobsleigh.
Apolo Anton Ohno won his second
short track speed skating gold medal, with only somewhat less
controversy than his first 4 years earlier.
Day 16
Day 17
The final day of competition and the
closing ceremony, were
held on
26 February. The Swedish men's
ice hockey team handed Finland their first loss in the final to
take the gold medal.
In the closing ceremony, Manuela Di Centa, a seven-time Olympic
medalist from Italy and then-member of the International Olympic
Committee, was scheduled to present the medals for the men's
50 kilometre cross-country skiing event. This resulted in
her presenting the gold medal to her own brother when
Giorgio Di Centa won the event to take his
second gold medal.
Venues
Olympic areas
Olympic events were mainly held in Turin, but other events (namely
skiing, snowboarding, and the track sports) were held in
mountainous outlying villages for obvious reasons.
Turin
Many venues were located in the Olympic District in central Turin,
including:
Other locations
Location of Turin (Torino in Italian)
and some other venues
- Bardonecchia
, located in Alta Val di
Susa, was the site of the snowboarding
competitions. An Olympic Village is also located in
Bardonecchia.
- Cesana Pariol
was the competition site for luge, bobsleigh, and
skeleton.
- Cesana-San Sicario
was the site of biathlon and alpine skiing
events.
- Pinerolo
, a town of 35,000, located 50 km from Turin,
was the host of curling
events.
- Pragelato
was the site of cross-country
skiing, ski
jumping, and Nordic combined
competitions.
- Sauze d'Oulx
, a resort located 80 km from Turin, was the
host of the freestyle
skiing events.
- Sestriere
, located 100 km from Turin, was the site of
alpine
skiing events. An Olympic village is also located in
Sestriere.
Olympic villages
Official Olympic training sites
Olympic mountain training site
Participating NOCs
A record 80
National Olympic
Committees (NOCs) entered athletes at the 2006 Winter Olympic
Games. This was an increase of three from the 77 represented at the
2002 Olympic Winter Games.
The number in parentheses indicates the number of participants that
NOC contributed. A total of 15 countries sent just 1 athlete.
It was
the first appearance for Albania
, Ethiopia
and Madagascar
. It was also the only appearance at the
Winter Olympics for
Serbia and
Montenegro, coming between their change of name in 2003 and
Montenegro's vote for independence in May.
Participating NOCs.
Green: 1-10; blue: 10-49; orange: 50-99; red: 100 or
more.
Despite the overall increase of NOCs and number of athletes, the
following NOCs which competed at the previous Winter Games did not
participate in Turin:
Organization
Out of 40,000 applicants, 20,000 volunteers were selected to help
the athletes, spectators, and journalists, and to prepare the
competition sites. They were selected by the recruiting program
Noi2006.
Construction
Sixty-five sporting facilities, various infrastructures, sport
villages for athletes and media, and transportation infrastructures
were constructed for a total of 1.7 billion euros.
Among the most important sporting facilities that were used:
- The
Stadio
Olimpico
(formerly known as Stadio Comunale);
- 5
sports halls (3 new, 2 rearranged): the Palazzo a Vela re-designed
by Gae Aulenti (to host short track and ice skating), the Oval Lingotto
(speed ice skating), Torino Esposizioni
(ice hockey), the Ice stadium in corso Tazzoli, the
Palasport
Olimpico
designed by Arata Isozaki (ice hockey);
- The Olympic arch of Turin;
- Olympic villages of Turin, Bardonecchia and Sestriere;
- The ice stadium in Pinerolo, re-arranged and enlarged, to host
the curling competition;
- A new stadium in Torre Pellice (ice hockey);
- 12 new intermediate-level ski lifts in Cesana Torinese, Cesana
San Sicario, Sestriere, Bardonecchia, Claviere, Sauze d'Oulx,
Pragelato;
- The
tracks for bobsled, luge, and skeleton in Cesana (the second
international track in Italy, along with the one in Cortina
d'Ampezzo);
The most important transport infrastructure works were:
In the city, from the urban point of view, the main developments
were the
Palafuksas, a glass building
designed by
Massimiliano Fuksas,
the new civic library designed by Mario Bellini, the new Modern Art
Gallery and the great project of the "Spina", that will provide
urban regeneration over an area of 2 million square meters through
the construction of an underground urban railway and the
re-utilization of abandoned industrial areas.
Broadcasting
The 2006 Olympic Winter Games were broadcast worldwide by a number
of television broadcasters:
- An extensive list of official broadcasters is found at The Games on Television section of the Torino
Games official site.
- The
BBC provided television and radio coverage of
the winter Olympics in the UK
- the TV
coverage was presented mainly by Grandstand regulars such as Hazel Irvine and Clare
Balding. Most of the coverage was shown on BBC Two, with some on BBC
One, and there was also BBCi for
Freeview, Satellite and Cable (digital TV) viewers. BBC also
broadcast many events live on the webcast Freeview provides an extra two
screens whereas all 3 interactive streams were available to UK
users only on bbc.co.uk and Digital
Satellite and Cable such as Sky Digital.
- Eurosport also provided live coverage
of events to viewers across the EU and Europe.
- American Forces Network
rebroadcast some of this coverage for military personnel serving
outside the United States.
- SportTV2 broadcast for the first time
all days and all events in Brazil.
- ČT4 Sport
was introduced on the occasion of the Olympic Games
in the Czech Republic.
Olympic problems
The Games had several problems, including, doping and poor ratings.
American skier
Bode Miller was also a
focus of controversy in his home country and Canada, where his
actions were not considered in line with the Olympic spirit.
Metro
The
metro was finally opened to the
public on February 4, 2006 after a 45 day delay. It operated on a
shorter stretch (
XVIII Dicembre (Porta Susa) to
Fermi - 11 stations) than originally forecast; it finally
reached the main railway station (
Porta Nuova) and the
rest of the city centre more than one year after the Games, in
October 2007. For the duration of the Games, a single ticket (5
euros) covered use of both the metro and other means of public
transportation for a whole day. However, during the Games, metro
service stopped at 6:00 pm, making it impractical for spectators of
evening events. Furthermore, the metro did not reach any of the
Olympic venues. On the other hand, the bus service was heavily
improved for the Games, although still inadequate at night
hours.
Weather
A number of Alpine competitions were delayed because of low
visibility caused by snowfall. Despite these events being
postponed, most were later held in better weather without any
problems.
Doping
Italian police raided the Austrian athletes' quarter in search of
evidence of doping. The raid was conducted due to suspicions over
the presence of biathlon coach
Walter
Mayer, who had been banned from all Olympic events up to and
including the
Vancouver Olympic
Games in 2010 due to previous doping convictions. Around the
time of the raid Mayer and two Austrian biathletes, Wolfgang Perner
and Wolfgang Rottmann, tried to escape and fled back to Austria.
Later, the Austrian ski federation president said that the two
athletes told him they "may have used illegal methods." After some
days the results of the tests of all 10 tested Austrian athletes
were presented and were all negative.List of athletes with doping
convictions in these Games:
- Russian Olga Pyleva was stripped of
her silver medal in 15 km biathlon event after testing
positive for carphedon.
- Brazilian bobsled athlete Armando
dos Santos, ejected from the Games after a preventive
antidoping test came positive (the results were from a test
conducted in Brazil).
Ratings and attendance
A number of events reported low spectator attendance despite having
acceptable ticket sales. Preliminary competition and locally less
popular sports failed to attract capacity crowd as expected.
Organizers explained this was because blocks of seats were reserved
or purchased by sponsors and partners who later did not show up at
the events.
Several news organizations reported that many Americans are not as
interested in the Olympics as in years past. It has been suggested
that reasons for this disinterest include the
tape delay coverage, which showed events in
prime-time as much as 18 hours later in
the
Western United States, and
also due to the lack of success achieved by big-name American
athletes.
In Canada, CBC's coverage has also posted disappointing numbers,
which were reduced as the Canadian men's hockey team was eliminated
early in the competition. Primetime ratings reached only as high as
#7 in the weekly ratings. However, ratings for live, afternoon
coverage have attracted 300,000 more viewers than the taped,
primetime coverage. Overall, only primetime coverage has suffered,
dropping 45% from the 2002 Games, with the entire coverage being
52% ahead from 2002. Meanwhile on
TSN, the numbers for its live curling
coverage (which aired as early as 3:00am EST) were between 300,000
and 500,000 viewers.
The Olympics' main threat in the USA was the
2006 season of American
Idol. One night of interest was
23
February in which the first results show of the season went
head to head with that night's coverage which included the Women's
Free Skate in Figure Skating.
One of the largest television viewer ratings in history was on
Tuesday night. Torino Olympics went head-to-head with other
prime-time reality TV shows such as Dancing with the Stars,
Survivor, American Idol, etc...
Security measures
As with
every Olympics since the Munich massacre
at the 1972 Summer
Olympics and increasingly since the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics, there
was heavy security due to fears of terrorism.
The organizers further increased security measures
[11594] in connection with the
Jyllands-Posten
Muhammad cartoons controversy and insisted that the Olympic
Games were going to be safe, which they were; the Olympics
concluded without a major breach of security occurring.
See also
External links
Notes
Alpine skiing
(10)
Biathlon
(10)
Bobsleigh
(3)
Cross-country
skiing (12)
Curling
(2)
Figure skating
(4)
Freestyle
skiing (4)
Ice hockey
(2)
Luge
(3)
Nordic combined
(3)
Short
track speed skating (8)
Skeleton
(2)
Ski jumping
(3)
Snowboarding
(6)
Speed skating
(12)
- Figure skating, short-track speed
skating
to the railway
station of Porta
Susa
.
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