Dan Snow's History of the Winter Olympics

In 1887, a 27-year-old Methodist minister

from Horncastle in Lincolnshire

travelled to Madras, now Chennai, in India.

Henry Lunn lasted a year as a missionary,

long enough for his wife, Mary, to present him with a son, Arnold,

and long enough to discover

that Madras did not sit entirely well with his constitution.

The Lunns...swapped the Indian subcontinent for the Alps in Europe,

first Grindelwald in Switzerland and then Chamonix here in France.

They started offering rugged retreats

which would boost people's muscular Christianity.

He would thoroughly have approved

of this walk up to the glacier here above Chamonix,

because what they were offering

was the thrill of adventure...in the mountains.

The winter package holiday was born

through Henry's cooperative educational tours,

which became Lunn Poly, in its day

the biggest travel agency in Britain.

And what has any of this to do

with the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games?

Sochi was made popular by Joseph Stalin,

the much-feared leader of the Soviet Union.

He had a summer dacha here and, thanks to him, the Black Sea resort

became Russia's holiday destination of choice.

But without the Lunn family and their adventures here in the Alps,

it's perfectly possible that there would be nothing going on

this year in southern Russia

that would be seizing the world's attention.

Sochi will be holding the Winter Olympics just over a century after

international sport began on snow and ice.

To tell that story, I've come here to the Alps,

where British pioneers helped to shape modern winter sports.

Balliol College, Oxford.

Sir Henry Lunn's son, Arnold, was a student here.

But he spent his time dreaming not of Oxford spires

but of mountain peaks.

He'd inherited his father's love of all things alpine.

As a ten-year-old, he had watched in awe as his father's generation

scrambled up and then threw themselves down

the steep slopes in Chamonix.

I studied here as well, but I don't think somehow

I quite fit in with the description of Balliol students

given by Herbert Asquith, who became Prime Minister.

He studied classics here.

He wrote that they had

a "tranquil consciousness of an effortless superiority".

Might have been effortless for him.

Anyway, Asquith was Prime Minister for six years before the First World War

and the first two years of the Great War.

The early 20th century, the closing years of Britain's "imperial century",

a time of dominance on the seas

and on land an empire that at its peak

would stretch over 13 million square miles,

containing around a quarter of the world's population.

It was also the age of adventurers.

There was Robert Falcon Scott, Scott of the Antarctic,

and another polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton.

The requirements of running an empire and their spirit of adventure

spawned a new passion for the British, organising sport,

sport on the playing fields of home

and wherever in the world the Empire carried the mother country's games.

Athletics, golf, cricket, hockey, rowing,

association football, rugby football, lawn tennis, croquet,

all given shape and order, a universal set of laws,

by the British ruling class.

For these serial organisers, no activity was beyond their reach.

We live on an island of many bumps rather than mountain ranges,

but it didn't stop the British tackling the Alps

with their customary sense of orderliness.

As far back as 1865,

engraver, illustrator and climber Sir Edward Whymper

was the first to reach the summit of the Matterhorn.

His descent had ended in disaster

as four of his party fell to their deaths.

RUMBLING

But despite the many dangers and the deaths,

it didn't stop a whole host of young, ambitious climbers

from coming out here to the Alps and trying to bag all these peaks,

names that are forgotten now but at the time were famous,

Mummery, Wynthrop Young, Stephen.

But one name has survived, a man who trained here

before his final assault

on the world's highest peak, Everest, in 1924...

..Mallory, who climbed these peaks

before perishing out in the Himalayas.

The British led the way up the mountains, slowly, methodically,

in an orderly fashion,

but they also led the way coming down them...at speed.

In 1884, Major William Bulpett

had built the Cresta Run in St Moritz in Switzerland

for skeleton toboggans.

And now the Lunns were putting the British on skis.

My great-grandfather was one of the people who brought people to the Alps

and, you know, he saw quite rightly that to go to the Alps in the winter

was a marvellous thing to do,

as opposed to sticking around in London

and all the smog and the bad weather.

One of my great-grandfather's first parties,

I think it was to France,

there were about four skiers and they had a guide.

And the skiers asked the guide,

"When you're on these things, can you turn?"

And the guide said, "I believe it's possible,

"but I personally don't know how to do it."

The Lunns were bringing the British on winter sports holidays

to Swiss villages like Wengen, Adelboden, Murren and St Moritz.

If perhaps more accessible than the climbing aristocracy,

this was still skiing for the wealthy, the privileged,

the resolutely amateur.

It was people, largely speaking,

who came from a club started by my great-grandfather

called the Public Schools Alpine Sports Club.

He made it pretty much exclusive to people who had been to university

or who had been to a public school.

Before then...people with a certain amount of money

didn't really want to travel

on what was called a package tour in those days.

Skiing, said Arnold, was a branch of exploration,

they had to solve their own problems with little help from guidebooks or guides,

who, Arnold boasted, he often dispensed with.

There you go, that good old Balliol trait,

a "tranquil consciousness of effortless superiority".

Winter sport could also be found closer to home.

In 1908, the London Olympics began,

starting in April and lasting six months, the longest Games ever.

Right down at the rear end of the schedule in October

were the first Olympic winter sports, figure skating.

Britain's Florence Madeline "Madge" Syers won the ladies' singles.

This British confidence, this willingness to innovate,

even on other people's mountains, this arrogance, if you like,

not surprisingly didn't go down that well in countries

with well-developed traditions of winter sports.

I mean, who are the Brits to be telling the Norwegians about skiing?

"Ski" is an Old Norse word.

And how had the Arctic explorer, the Norwegian Ronald Amundsen,

managed to beat Scott of the Antarctic

by 34 days to the South Pole?

On skis, that's how.

And skis also helped him to get out...alive.

BIRDSONG

When you come to these Scandinavian countries, like Norway,

you realise just how important winter sports are to people around here.

They regard ski jumping for example

like we'd think of the World Cup finals.

NEWSREEL: 'On the great Holmenkollen jump just outside Oslo

'the first half of what's often called

'the Classic Combined event was completed.

'It's a supreme test of all-round skiing ability with a ski jump

'followed on the next day with an 18-kilometre cross-country race.'

In fact, when the ski jumping happened here during the Olympic Games

it's estimated that 100,000 spectators turned up just to watch.

BIRDSONG

It's minus five,

why are we all out here firing rifles,

why aren't we safely tucked up at home?

We love doing biathlon, we love training, we love the cold.

We have to love the cold to live in Norway.

It's not always cold here, but the winter is cold with a lot of snow.

And they say that the Norwegians are born with skis on their feet.

-It's not real.

-So in England, of course, the big excitement

is the football World Cup.

For you guys, are the Winter Olympics

-the biggest event of the sporting calendar?

-Yes, it really is.

Then all of Norway comes together

and we identify with our sportsmen and women.

We are competing at the top and then we are one big nation.

The Swedes, who ruled over Norway at the beginning of the 20th century,

weren't too bad either.

In 1901, they hosted the inaugural Nordic Games.

There was bandy, which is a version of ice hockey still played today,

skeleton tobogganing, curling and ski jumping.

GUNSHOT

The Scandinavians were keen to protect their Nordic sports

and they lobbied against their inclusion in the Olympic programme.

There could only be one winner,

the Nordic Games or the Winter Olympics.

It was a fight that would be decided in the French Alps.

The pendulum was shifting towards the Olympics.

The last Nordic Games were held in 1926,

two years AFTER a special international winter sports festival

held in Chamonix in France.

It wasn't just any old week of sport,

but sponsored by the International Olympic Committee

and organised by the French Olympic Committee.

There was bobsleighing, curling, figure skating,

ice hockey, military patrol and plenty of Nordic skiing.

Still no downhill racing.

There was even a special gold medal

for the team of mountaineers, which included Mallory,

who'd tried to ascend Everest in 1922.

Baron de Coubertin personally wrote to the climber and asked him if he'd come and pick up his medal.

When the reply came...it was to the point.

He wrote, "Absolutely impossible. Mallory."

He was headed back to the Himalayas for his final attempt.

CHURCH BELL CHIMES

The Games here in Chamonix had been so successful

that two years later,

that is in the year of the last ever Nordic Games,

the International Olympic Committee

decided retrospectively to call this the first Winter Olympics.

Those were the first. 90 years on Sochi will hold the 22nd.

Winter sport had come of age.

The Winter Olympics were next held in St Moritz in 1928

and then Lake Placid, New York State, in 1932.

The Olympic Games are on! And now for a little novelty,

my speciality, skating on stilts.

Ice skating was the main attraction.

Part of the glamour of skating

comes from the history of it and the old days

when they would compete outdoors.

And, you know, you would hand your music to the orchestra

and the conductor would play

and it's snowing and, you know, you're competing.

I would have loved to have experienced that.

Winter sports had found its first superstar, Sonja Henie from Norway,

three gold medals in three Olympic Games from 1928.

She would invite controversy for her friendship with Adolf Hitler.

Well, Sonja was figure skating for many years.

And she really set the tone.

I mean, she has more titles than anyone ever and was at one point

the highest-paid person in Hollywood, male or female, as a movie star.

'Sun Valley Serenade. Starring Sonja Henie. So radiant.'

What would you do up in Sun Valley,

-where the temperature's 106 below zero and the snow's up to your neck?

-Snow! Is it like that?

Anything on skis...remained very Nordic.

But now Lunn was working on making skiing so exciting and spectacular

that it would be impossible to leave out.

Arnold Lunn was the man who started it all, downhill and slalom,

it didn't exist before. So that was the foundation of alpine ski races.

Norwegians were furious,

they compared it to the Eskimos rewriting the rules of cricket.

Lunn replied maybe they should, there'd be fewer draws.

Arnold founded the Kandahar Club

in honour of Field Marshall Roberts,

hero of the Anglo-Afghan war of 1880.

Here in Murren in 1928, he put on a show that could not be ignored,

the Inferno International Ski Race.

'Here at the skiing resort of Murren, high up in the Swiss Alps,

'competitors are preparing for the start of the long-distance ski racing championship.

'As the entrants set out over the 14km course,

'a light covering of powdery snow

'makes the going difficult over the course.'

It was an absolutely crazy idea at first.

I think...not the Swiss would have done it.

-HE SIGHS

-Those early inferno races were very, well, British.

The winner of the second ever race was called James Riddle

and he finished in 45 minutes.

And the judges at the bottom were in the pub, they weren't expecting anyone that early.

They said, "My God! You shouldn't be here for another half an hour."

He said, "That's not my problem, I'm here now and I need a beer."

No wonder this place inspired Ian Fleming. I need a beer!

In the 1930s, the make-up of the Winter Olympics were changed for ever

as Arnold Lunn's great project came to fruition.

Lunn found a powerful Austrian ally in the person of Hannes Schneider,

who supported the Kandahar Ski Club in St Anton.

Both of them were now pushing

for the inclusion of alpine sports in the Olympic Games.

But they had to wait till the following year, when both games were awarded to Germany.

The August games of 1936 were in Berlin,

in February six months earlier the Winter Games would go to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria.

NEWSREEL: 'Opening the Olympic Games in a blizzard,

'athletes of 28 nations march past and Hitler takes the salute.

'It will be noticed that the British team salutes in Nazi fashion as a compliment to their hosts.'

One of the most dramatic moments,

I had a seat next to Hitler to watch the procession,

the Swiss team marched past with their hands down at the side looking in front.

And I watched Hitler's face

and it had a look of absolute hatred and fury on it.

I thought, "My God! If there's ever a war and the Swiss invaded, they'd catch it for this."

But Arnold Lunn's success in bringing alpine sport to the Olympics

would be hijacked by the Nazis.

Here a combined downhill and slalom alpine event was introduced for both men and women.

Germany won gold and silver in both,

a powerful alpine nation dominating an alpine sport.

'In the slalom skiing event Germany was victorious.

'The slalom is a downhill ski run that includes difficult turns between flags.

'And the women's race was won by Christl Cranz.'

Arnold Lunn had seen it coming, he'd watched as times changed,

the English were no longer the kings of the resorts.

He wrote, "In the days of our imperial power,

"nobody dared question the English skaters' demand for Lebensraum.

"The English skated in the English style

"and the great rinks of Grindelwald and St Moritz

"were seldom troubled by the intrusion of continental heresy.

"But Kipling's England passed away."

Now he was being humorous here, but he's making a serious point

about the parallels between power politics and winter sports.

His use of the word "Lebensraum" is fascinating.

Here in Germany in the 1930s Lebensraum meant living space,

the desire for a German empire stretching right through Central and Eastern Europe.

Lunn was referring to the fact that from here on in the Winter Olympics

would always be a stage for great power rivalries to play out.

People were aware of some of the more menacing aspects of the Nazi ideology,

there were reports in the foreign press of Jews being rounded up

and persecuted here in Garmisch

and the Germans themselves were then worried about international opinion.

The head of the organising committee, a man called Karl Ritter von Halt,

he wrote to the Interior Ministry in Berlin.

He says, "If the slightest disturbance occurs in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

"it will not be possible to hold the Olympic Games in Berlin,

"because all the other nations will withdraw from the event."

Anti-Jewish signs adorned the buildings throughout Garmisch,

high-ranking Nazis understood this would derail the Games.

Every effort was being made down here in Garmisch

to improve the atmosphere, bring a little Olympic spirit in.

The "Jews forbidden" signs were being taken down

and the Nazis even relented when it came to team selection.

At first the German authorities refused to select their most famous ice hockey player, Rudi Ball,

for the Olympics because he was Jewish, but then remarkably his team-mate, Gustav Jaenecke,

said he would refuse to play unless Rudi was selected.

Extraordinarily, the authorities gave in, they selected Rudi,

they even let him and his family leave Germany after the games

and thus they survived the war.

The final verdict on the Garmisch games remains damning

thanks to their association with the Nazis.

Expressions like "relenting" and "giving way" soon disappeared from the vocabulary.

And as soon as the games were over the anti-Jewish signs went back up around the town.

Franz Pfnur, who won the first alpine event so beloved of Arnold Lunn, went on to join the SS.

Way back in 1936, Arnold Lunn had been appalled at the way

the Nazis had politicised winter sport.

And when asked his opinion on the Olympic Games of that year,

he said, "Germans, let me let you into a little secret,

"there are still some people who enjoy skiing for fun."

Those claims of 1936 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

were the final Winter Olympics before World War II.

'I remember a time, and what a time, when the war you thought was going to be over last summer,

'and should've been over last summer, showed every horrible sign of lasting through to next summer.'

'The British, browned off, brassed off...

'that's how they were.'

The Alps turned into just another battle ground

and remained that way until the 8th of May 1945, VE Day.

The mountains had a captivating, spiritual effect on many.

The leading Victorian thinker John Ruskin described the Alps as the great cathedrals of the earth,

with their gates of rock, pavements of clouds, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow.

Once the war was over, Arnold Lunn could return to his beloved Switzerland

and his snow-clad churches in the sky.

He is best remembered for his contribution to the skiing world,

but he was a very religious man as well.

It was the sunsets and the dawns in the mountains

that made him believe that a god existed,

because these dawns and sunsets just couldn't possibly have happened by accident.

In 1952 he was knighted for services to British skiing

and Anglo-Swiss relations.

And he continued to ski in Murren until his death in 1974.

NEWSREEL: 'Dawn is breaking over this peaceful Norwegian village

'as Mr Pastry quietly leaves his hotel for his first skiing lesson.'

The Olympics resumed after the war.

Downhill skiing would no longer be the butt of Scandinavian jokes,

it would become the blue riband event of future games.

In 1948, the Games return to San Moritz,

familiar St Moritz in neutral Switzerland

for the Games of Renewal.

Renewal but not reconciliation...not yet.

The Axis countries were not invited, so no Germany, Japan or Italy.

Renewal might have been the dream,

but the post-war reality was austerity.

It seemed like the only thing that was new was a terrible divide between East and West.

As Winston Churchill famously put it, it was as if an iron curtain

had descended across the continent of Europe.

Once wartime allies, the USSR and the West were now bitter enemies.

In the winter of 1948, tensions were building around Berlin.

They would lead to a Soviet blockade of West Berlin

and the Berlin Airlift, one of the defining events of the Cold War.

The Soviet Union chose not to attend the San Moritz games.

They were tempted four years later for the ice hockey

but eventually decided to stay at home.

The wartime Axis powers of Japan, Germany and Italy were allowed to go to the Oslo Games in 1952.

There were some complaints and reservations,

but in the end the spirit of reconciliation won out.

'Three seconds made all the difference,

'enough to give this German quartet of heavyweights the Olympic bobsleigh title.'

The following Olympics, it was actually awarded to a former Axis power, Italy.

The games were held in Cortina d'Ampezzo

and this time the Soviet Union decided to turn up.

There had been a change in attitude towards international competition.

Sport was no longer seen as an affectation of the capitalist bourgeoisie,

instead they'd worked out that a physically fit nation would be a productive nation

and excellence in international competition would force

the rest of the world to realise the superiority of the Soviet system.

It wasn't an easy pitch, certain...promises had to be made.

There was a concern that if Soviet athletes failed on the international stage

then that would be used by the Western media to throw mud at the entire Soviet project.

And that meant that the chairman of the relevant government committee for sport,

before entering any international competition,

he had to write a personal note to Stalin here at the Kremlin guaranteeing victory.

Italy introduced a touch of slapstick to the opening ceremony,

but then with an altogether more stern-faced determination

the Soviet Union swept the top of the medal table

with seven golds, three silvers and six bronzes.

They would then go on to dominate nearly every Winter Olympics for the next 40 years.

'Dagadov has scored!'

'The Soviet Union won this match.'

'Vladimir Beikov of the Soviet Union only 21.'

'He seems to thinks he's done it! He seems to know he's done it! He has!'

The shift in international sporting power didn't go unnoticed.

The American magazine Sports Illustrated said the Soviets

were casing Cortina like bank heisters planning a caper.

And one US senator said there were 12 million professional Soviet athletes

with their sinister eyes fixed on the 1956 games.

And they weren't there, he continued, to promote sportsmanship and fair play,

but to increase international Communist domination.

The Berlin Wall was about to go up,

the Cold War was filtering into every part of society, including sports.

As in all wars, the sports war had its propaganda victories and defeats.

The big star of the games from the West point of view was Tony Sailer

from Kitzbuhel in Austria, known as the Blitz from Kitz.

He won three gold medals in downhill, slalom and giant slalom.

Less noticed in the West was Yevgeny Grishin from Russia,

he won two gold medals in speed skating and smashed the world record.

The Games were getting more popular.

In 1964, for the first time, the BBC would televise the Winter Olympics

and Britain would win its first and only gold medal in bobsleigh.

Tony Nash and Robin Dixon, 3rd Baron of Glentoran.

It was in a race that harked back to another era

and a victory for sportsmanship as their great rival, Eugeni Monti,

offered to help them fix their faulty sled.

It was, said Tony Nash, "a magnificent gesture".

Did you know what you had to do when you left the top?

We knew what we had to do, yes,

but doing it is another matter.

One of the key principles of the original Olympic Charter

was that athletes should be amateurs.

So how could it possibly be said that athletes that did nothing except train for their chosen sport,

paid for by the state, were just doing it for the love of the game?

The Americans thought the Soviets were 100% professional.

And since the president of the IOC between 1952 and 1972 was their very own Avery Brundage,

born in Detroit, raised in Chicago and ardently on the side of the amateurs,

the battle to protect the Olympics against professionalism and commercialisation was keenly fought

and would ultimately be lost.

It wasn't just the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc that were threatening the amateur code.

The gentlemanly, Christian alpine sport so beloved of the Lunns

was becoming so popular by the 1960s that the commercial advertisers,

those foot soldiers of capitalism, started paying attention.

'Style, colours, the right anorak

'and of course those eye-catching ski trousers.

'You can get your equipment for around £30.'

The Alps had become the holiday choice for the great British middle class

and they left political correctness back at Heathrow.

'If you are in a spot, someone will fly to your aid,

'especially if you are sweet and helpless.

'It's so useful to have a man around, I'm sure you'll agree.

'And after all that, he's got something to chew on too.'

But the public loved no sports star more than a skiing star.

The dominating figure of these games has been, of course, Jean-Claude Killy,

the Frenchman whose appearance and performances have made him in this country anyway almost an Olympic god.

Enter Jean-Claude Killy, winner of three gold medals in the 1968 Olympic Games.

I had to ski all out...

..and to try everything I knew to really ski the fastest this mountain could be skied.

Obviously now you can relax and celebrate.

So now I can relax and drink champagne.

After his triple triumph, Killy advertised Chevrolet cars,

Schwinn bicycles, United Airlines.

Do you know me?

I won a few gold medals in the 1968 Olympics as an amateur,

but skiing for me now is a business

and for that I need an American Express card.

In a deal with Head skis he went into movies, motor racing.

The world loved the dashing Frenchman.

SUPERSTARS THEME From skiing, triple Olympic champion

and double world champion Jean-Claude Killy.

Killy with the first of his five.

And that will do very nicely, left footed into the corner.

And Killy delighted at that.

The bastion of amateurism, Avery Brundage, wasn't impressed.

The General Charles de Gaulle.

He shunned his medal ceremonies and threatened to cut skiing from the Olympic programme.

The president of the IOC couldn't nail Killy or get skiing banned.

By the time of the next games in Sapporo, Japan,

he did make an example of the next skiing superstar, Karl Schranz of Austria.

Schranz was ever happy to complement his skiing with commercial exposure.

Avery Brundage now banned him from the Sapporo games.

It was all right for Austria as their beloved Franz Klammer

would take gold four years later at the Innsbruck Olympics.

Franz Klammer is only just 22, but in the blue riband of the Games,

Klammer means as much to Austrians as Killy did to the French in 1968.

Austrian skiing's finest moment.

There's the time! It's coming up now! 1.45! He's done it!

Klammer's done it!

And this crowd go wild!

Not much consolation for Schranz though.

Brundage retired in 1972 and after his presidency

the rules on amateurism were slowly dispensed with until they were pretty much got rid of altogether,

although they do still exist for boxing and wrestling.

But there would be one ultimate showdown in the winter of 1980

between those who believed in the amateur ideal

and those who chose to ignore it.

The games were held in Lake Placid, New York State.

Now as ever with the Winter Olympics the setting was incredibly dramatic,

but the political background was also certainly not placid.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan at the end of 1979,

just two months before these Winter Olympics were due to take place.

And that meant that the Americans had decided to boycott the summer games in Moscow.

But the Soviets were going to send their team here to northern New York State

to go toe-to-toe with their deadliest superpower rival.

Now, Canada had dominated ice hockey at the early games,

winning six of the first seven golds.

Only Britain in 1936 with a team packed full of Canadian ex-pats denied them the clean sweep.

Three cheers for Japan. Hip, hip, hooray! Hooray!

But since joining the Winter Olympics in 1956, the Soviets had taken over,

they'd won five out of six.

The USA had only ever won once, in 1960 at Squaw Valley.

Valeri Kharlamov, Vladislav Tretiak and Boris Mikhailov

would be enshrined in ice hockey's Hall of Fame

and they and their team arrived in Lake Placid fully determined to win Olympic gold again.

They were confident they could beat anyone, even the best-paid professionals in the world,

as found in America's National Hockey League.

These pros of course were not eligible for the American Olympic team.

Team USA was assembled by coach Herb Brooks from the university leagues.

They were all amateur.

-How long has this museum been here?

-Well, since shortly after the 1980 games.

They keep improving it and adding more and more things to it, so...

it gets a lot of visitors now.

At the time what did that game mean to Americans?

It was the peak of the Cold War, that's what made it more significant.

Russia had invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979,

and the only time...still the only time the Olympics has ever been held in Russia was in the summer of 1980.

Those who believe that sport has nothing to do with politics

are living in a dream world!

President Carter was just about to issue a boycott.

The United States does not wish to be represented

in a host country that is invading and subjugating another nation.

Well, this is it, this is where the Miracle On Ice moment happened.

-Nice! The Theatre of Dreams itself.

-The Theatre of Dreams.

A small little arena where the improbable, well, it became the probable.

We had a bunch of college kids, ages 19, 20, 21,

taking on this professional team from the Soviet Union.

So it's really about history and it's about politics.

This small rink... You know, it was the Cold War on ice.

The Winter Olympics had been sucked into the Cold War rivalries

and these ice rinks and ski hills had been turned into battlefields.

National pride was at stake.

In a political or nationalistic sense, I'm sure this game is being

viewed with varying perspectives, but manifestly it is a hockey game.

The United States and the Soviet Union on a sheet of ice in Lake Placid, New York.

These are the inspirational words spoken by Herb Brooks,

the coach of the US team, just before they went out on the ice.

"Great moments are born from great opportunity. That's what we have here tonight, boys.

-"That's what you've earned here tonight. One game."

-It's a goal!

Kasatonov has scored!

"If we played them ten times, they might win nine, but not this game, not tonight.

"Tonight we're going to skate with them."

In the Olympic Handbook, Morrow is described as brutal.

"So now we're going to stay with them and shut them down."

Schneider scores! What a shot!

"I'm sick and tired of hearing about what a great hockey team the Soviets have."

-Makarov. Goal!

-"Screw 'em. This is your time. Now go out there and take it."

As someone who's been a crushing underdog their entire sporting career,

this speech really talks to me.

Tretiak was the Russian goalie,

considered the best goalie in the world.

With 12 seconds left in the first period and Russia ahead 2-1,

Dave Christian picks up the puck on the right wing

and lets a slap shot go outside the blue line.

Now, Tretiak had probably never missed a rebound in his life, but he missed that one.

It's there! One second to go!

And the United States have equalised!

Tretiak did not look too good.

And that Russian coach went berserk, he took Tretiak out and he never put him back in.

Eruzione! Goal!

So the best goalie in the world sat on the bench.

That's how the college kids beat the Russians.

Eruzione has put the United States in the lead by four goals to three!

The result would be known for ever in America as the Miracle On Ice.

And the United States have beaten the Soviet Union!

WILD CHEERING

I have never seen such scenes in all my life!

In the Soviet Union, Pravda, the official newspaper, chose not to publish the result.

-Hello, Mr President.

-Tell all the team how much I love them

and we'll see you tomorrow at the White House.

And we're all proud of you.

-Thank you very much. We'll all be there.

-Good luck to you.

-OK, good luck to you.

-Go celebrate.

-OK. We won't.

It's still the single greatest moment in...in sports!

CROWD CHANTS: USA! USA! USA! USA!

It's difficult to overstate the importance of the Miracle On Ice

in recent American history.

It's been credited with everything

from Hollywood's obsession with sports movies

to a rebirth of national pride in America in the 1980s.

The Miracle On Ice had such a huge impact

that it eclipsed some of the other achievements of the games.

There was another miracle when Eric Heinden won

an unprecedented five Olympic gold medals in speed skating.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Heiden leading now!

And he crosses the line there - 38.03 - a new Olympic record

and he beats the reigning Olympic champion.

As for the US college boys,

they went on to beat Finland to win the gold medal.

The Soviet Union faced nine long, hard years of war in Afghanistan,

and during that time, they won both men's hockey finals at the Olympics,

but they didn't win the one that mattered -

here in Lake Placid in upstate New York in the good ol' US of A.

ACCOMPANYING FLUTE / ACCENTED ENGLISH: Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.

The city and the area surrounding it is filled with many moods.

Wherever one goes, there is a sense of great history,

the feeling that someone has walked here before.

The children of Sarajevo will be the ones

who will get the most out of the Olympic Games coming to the city,

for they will be the ones who will carry on

the happy tradition of friendship.

The 1980s were extraordinary times for the Soviet Union.

First, there was their withdrawal from Afghanistan,

and perestroika and glasnost,

the fall of the Berlin Wall,

the collapse of the Soviet Union itself

and the unravelling of their Eastern European empire.

And nowhere was that reshaping of the old order

more brutal and destructive

than here in Sarajevo,

the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

-RADIO:

-It's eight o'clock on Wednesday, 30 August.

The news headlines this morning.

NATO planes and guns have been attacking Bosnian Serb positions

in retaliation for Monday's mortar attack on Sarajevo...

I mean, this is Europe 1993, not 1943.

This was the view that the Serb commanders would have had

during the siege of Sarajevo,

the longest siege in modern military history.

But only a few years before,

these buildings, this hillside

had been the site of a joyful occasion -

the 1984 Winter Olympics.

RADIO: The ski jumping at Mount Igman,

twin towers feeding into one landing point.

One of the biggest, newest

and most expensive constructions is the bobsleigh run at Mount Trebevic -

it's totally refrigerated, and one report puts its cost at 7 million.

It's just amazing to think that in the last 30 years alone,

this has been a state-of-the-art Olympic bobsleigh track,

a battlefield, and is now obviously a Mecca

for graffiti artists and kids on their bikes.

We came back to Sarajevo since the war and, erm...

it was just a war-torn city.

Blown apart.

We actually saw the opening ceremony stadium,

a huge outdoor stadium,

that had now been turned into a graveyard.

I think that's when the full impact of what had happened hit me.

This is a town fall of mosques, synagogues and churches.

At the time, this was probably the most cosmopolitan place

ever to host the Winter games,

and it was certainly the first time

the Winter Olympics had gone to a place

with a large Muslim population.

-REPORTER:

-It's here in particular that Great Britain will be hoping

for those Olympic medals. It's the home of the figure skating.

Back in 1984, this was the ice rink for the Olympic Games

and this room reverberated with the sound of Bolero,

on an evening with 24 million people back in the UK watching.

-TANNOY:

-"..Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean..."

Going into the Olympics, I guess, in everyone's eyes,

it was ours to lose.

Everything was geared around leading up to 1984,

because this was our Olympics, this was our chance.

Going into the competition we were so focused.

Like a caged lion.

Using the music Bolero, it became so popular,

it even got to, like, number eight in the charts.

Can you believe that?

It was a piece of music that started very intimate

and grew and crescendo'd and got louder and bigger,

into a final frenzy.

We think back about when we performed it,

and from my point of view,

I see it sort of outside.

An outside-body experience.

It feels like a dream sequence.

It feels like I was looking down on someone else doing that,

because it was such an emotional piece, as well.

It was one of those routines that felt...eerily silent.

You know, when mayhem is going on in a movie,

they'll play slow music, in slow motion.

It almost felt like that.

We had so many flowers that people were giving us beside the ice,

and throwing onto the ice, and we were collecting them.

COMMENTATOR: And there's the first set of marks!

Do I really have to go any further?

They put the first lot of scores up, and there was a roar.

And then when they put the second lot of scores up,

it was a massive roar!

WILD CHEERING

COMMENTATOR: Right across the board! That's it.

What a marvellous, marvellous set of marks!

And I remember looking up at the scoreboard

and seeing all those sixes and thinking, "Wow!"

We were watching them put the flags up, the Union Jack

was sandwiched with the two Russian flags, as well.

Ouch.

There's never been any resentment of being a double act,

because that's what we are.

It's not Torvill and it's not Dean by themselves.

It's Torvill and Dean, it's Rolls-Royce, it's fish and chips.

Something about that performance by Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean -

the precision, the passion, that line of 6.0s - it defined an era.

It's gone, but no-one will ever forget it.

-REPORTER:

-Jean-Claude Killy he ain't.

-COMMENTATOR:

-And they're chanting for him.

They're chanting, "Eddie!" Look at this!

He's waving to the world!

Way back in 1894, Baron Pierre de Coubertin declared,

"The most important thing is not to win, but to take part."

-COMMENTATOR:

-Safely down.

Calgary '88 gave us The Eagle that could barely fly...

You have established many of your own personal bests,

and some of you have even soared like an eagle.

HUGE CHEER

..and a new phrase "cool runnings".

-COMMENTATOR:

-Oh, and he's over! Oh, dear me.

Not always known for self-deprecation,

the International Olympic Committee

looked at Eddie The Eagle and the Jamaican bobsleighers

and were not amused.

I think you look like an athlete.

-Do you really?

-Yes.

-Thank you very much.

-I think you look like a movie star.

-Thank you.

Qualification rules were tightened,

the Olympics was serious business.

Perhaps a little too serious.

Before the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994,

the competition for the US figure skating team

between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan got seriously out of hand.

An American figure skater is recovering

after being attacked as she finished a practice session

in an arena in Detroit.

Nancy Kerrigan, who is the national women's champion,

was attacked by a man believed to be carrying a crowbar.

Harding, crowned champion two days after the attack,

denies her involvement.

Harding's ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and bodyguard Shawn Eckhardt

have now been implicated.

There has been absolutely nothing to implicate Tonya Harding

in this incident at this point in time, to my knowledge.

Here on this rink in the town of Hamar,

about 130km north of Oslo and just a day's drive south of the Arctic Circle,

the world's media descended to watch the main event, Tonya versus Nancy.

Time magazine called it The Star-Crossed Olympics.

Nancy, just a month after the attack,

managed to win a silver medal here.

It's one of the great comeback stories of Olympic history.

She became the darling of America.

COMMENTATOR: Well, that was expected to be a triple lutz.

Tonya, visibly affected by the adverse publicity surrounding

the whole thing, could only manage eighth.

She always denied involvement in the attack,

but did plead guilty to conspiring to hinder the prosecution.

And that summer the US Figure Skating Association

banned her from ever competing in any Olympics again.

Later, she became a professional boxer,

just an extraordinary postscript to a bizarre life.

I wonder what the Lunns would have made of it all.

I wonder what Sir Henry would have said

when the IOC member from his beloved Switzerland

Marc Hodler had to announce the expulsion of several IOC members

after they were found taking gifts

in the build-up to the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002.

I think the Methodist preacher wouldn't have been too happy.

What would Sir Arnold have made of Shaun White,

double Olympic champion in the half pipe?

-COMMENTATORS:

-Has he got it?!

-YEAH! HE'S DOING IT!

-YEEESSS!

INDISTINCT YELLING

Not Arnold's cup of tea, you might think,

but having fought on the side of downhill skiing

against the Nordic establishment,

perhaps Arnold would have embraced freestyle.

Aaarrgh!

I wonder if the Lunns would have been able to get their heads around

the threat of the boycott against the Sochi Winter Olympic Games

because of anti-gay legislation just passed in Russia.

I am an American Olympic figure skater.

I'm a very flamboyant gay man, if you couldn't tell.

I am an athlete, I'm a husband,

and I'm a father to a beautiful puppy.

Sport and politics are intrinsically linked.

Unless, as Lord Carrington said, you are living in a dream world.

Sexual orientation is the battle ground this time

and Russia's attitude to homosexuals the focus for debate.

Say hi to the BBC.

Say hi to all the English people.

From the outside, because figure skating looks very flamboyant

and very "gay"...

to much of the Western world

and lots of our countries...

In Russia, a male figure skater is a man's man.

Russia is a place I've been obsessed with since I was very young.

And to say I am a Russophile is kind of an understatement -

I speak the language,

I have married one of their people.

When I go, I go to Russia as a celebrated athlete.

I am treated very well.

I'm kind of a chachki.

I'm a pretty, cute thing that...

..sparkles and shines and dances and entertains people.

And in Russia that's not threatening.

If I was going to Russia as a normal person,

this is a time when I would have to rethink that.

This is the time when I would be afraid.

The laws against gay people at the moment in Russia are terrible.

What is so terrifying about me...

..and my people

that you want to deny us rights and liberty

and the ability to live freely?

And I would ask the same thing of people

that are against gays in America.

CHEERING

But I'll never stay away from Russia.

Even if they don't want me there, I'll make them have me there.

Unless they deny me a visa.

This year in Sochi the gulf between East and West remains vast.

Fears over security cast a shadow over the games once again.

EXPLOSION

Terrorism is the great challenge of the 21st-century Olympics.

Let's hope the games will be remembered for events

on the ice and snow.

Arnold Lunn died in 1974,

having lived through two World Wars

and almost three decades of Cold War.

The world was a very different place to the end of the imperial century,

when he and his father had given alpine skiing -

that unique British combination of daredevil spirit

and an obsession with order.

It was the spirit of "wait your turn"...

now, go for it!

Now, figure skating is a sport that combines a series of rare qualities -

it has the power of the athlete, his grace, the skill,

and the sheer nerve.

-COMMENTATOR:

-John Curry did not put a foot wrong!

Robin Cousins - a great round of applause!

We may no longer be the pioneers of winter sports,

but considering our lack of mountains, or reliable snow,

we were probably pushing our luck on this one.

In the last 20 years, we've restored

some great British pride in those sports in which, once,

a long time ago, we set the rules.

-COMMENTATOR:

-She's done it!

It's Olympic gold for Great Britain.

Amy Williams could become an Olympic champion.

Surely, it's gold for Great Britain!

Oh, yes!

Amy Williams is the Queen of Speed!

Maybe soon we'll end our search for that elusive gold medal on snow...

..86 years after Sir Arnold Lunn launched that first

race in Murren.

They say if you can ski in Murren, you can ski anywhere.

But I never get tired of that - never!

So how many generations of Lunns is it now

that's come out here to ski?

I think I may be right in saying it's six.

Henry, Arnold, Peter, me, Lizzie,

and Molly is the sixth generation, yeah.

I bet that's longer than any other British family has been skiing.

Do you think your grandfather would've been happy

to see the success that skiing has enjoyed now across the world?

I think he probably would have been quite happy

that the downhill and the slalom really had...taken over.

It's Ingemar Stenmark, can he produce?

Gold!

The strength of Tomba - this remarkable ski-racer...

He flies!

..and skis for the gold medal.

Klammer's done it

and this crowd go wild!

I don't think he would have particularly taken

an awful lot of credit for it.

He would've thought, "If I didn't do it, somebody else would have."

The appeal of the Winter Olympics has never changed.

Just like its big brother, the motto remains

"Faster, higher, stronger".

But there is an extra dimension here -

man and woman's relationship,

not just for the political and social world around us,

but with nature...

..to test what is humanly possible, when snow, ice, and gravity

all come into play.

The rest of us may never pull off a triple axel,

or a Double McTwist 1260.

It's unlikely that we'll travel at 100mph

without the help of an engine,

and I doubt we'll ever experience 5G...

..but what we can all share

is that it's awfully fun to watch.

Lee coming round the outside...

Oh! And there's a fall! And they've all gone!

And that's left Steven Bradbury to cross the finishing line.

Sometimes absurd...

COMMENTATOR: This is a lap of honour

for Lindsey Jacobellis, the American.

OH, DRAMA! Jacobellis is down.

This is incredible - Friede-e-e-en!

Friede-e-e-en!

Unbelievable!

..and always spectacular!

It's escapism and it's available to all.

I'm sure the Lunns would wholeheartedly approve.

# Let it snow...

# Let it snow

# Oh, the weather outside is frightful

# But the fire is so delightful

# And since we've no place to go

# Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! #