France's Last Olympics

With the Olympics set to return to Paris next summer, I've been thinking a lot lately about the last Olympics held in France--the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville.  Specifically how the Albertville Games were widely criticized for how spread out they were.  Really, though, they were ahead of their time.  Because now, 30 years later, that's exactly what the IOC wants!

The 2026 Olympics will officially be co-hosted by Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, two cities that are 250 miles apart.  But only hockey, figure skating, short track and the Opening Ceremony will be in Milan, while only curling, biathlon, men's alpine skiing and the three sliding sports will be in Cortina.  The rest will be spread across northern Italian villages between the two cities.  So, they will truly be a regional Games.  There's even talk of having speed skating at the 2006 Olympic rink in Torino, which is only 90 miles from Milan, but 330 miles from Cortina.

But, as I said, this is exactly what the IOC wants.  They want host cities to use existing venues whenever possible, even if they're a significant distance outside the city.  We saw it in Tokyo.  We saw it in Beijing.  We'll see it in Paris (where surfing will be in Tahiti).  We'll most definitely see it in Milan-Cortina.  (There are so many existing sporting venues in the Los Angeles area that the 2028 Olympics will be mostly contained.)

In 1992, though, that wasn't the case.  Only 18 events in figure skating, short track and speed skating, as well as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies were held in Albertville.  The rest were spread throughout the Savoie region.  It really was a regional Olympics, 34 years before Northern Italy's.  Which was actually the biggest complaint at the time.  A lot of athletes and media said it felt more like a bunch of separate World Championships rather than an Olympics.

What's crazy, though, is that everything Albertville did 30 years ago fits exactly into the current Olympic model.  Every venue, except for the Ceremonies Stadium, which was always intended to be temporary, is still in use today.  Some of them have different uses now, and many had their capacities reduced.  In fact, most of them regularly host World Cup competition.  There's not a single white elephant.

For a while, it's seemed like the Albertville Games are the overlooked Olympics.  I don't want to say the "forgotten" Olympics because I think that would be a stretch.  But I think the good things about Albertville sometimes get lost because of that venue plan, which was seen as a negative at the time.  In hindsight, though, it proved to be visionary.

That's not the only reason the Albertville Games have become somewhat overlooked, though.  Albertville's unique place in Olympic history is certainly a factor, as well.  Although, I'd argue that the Albertville Games deserve to be remembered precisely because of that unique place in Olympic history.

Albertville was the last Winter Olympics held in the same year as the Summer Games.  Going to that off-year cycle is one of the best things the IOC has ever done.  It raised the profile of the Winter Games exponentially!  They no longer play second fiddle to another, bigger Olympics a few months later (with the exception of the COVID-created six-month Tokyo-Beijing gap, where the Winter Games were actually second).  Which is exactly what happened in 1992, when Albertville gave way to Barcelona.

A lot happened in the world in the three-and-a-half years between the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul and the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville.  Most notably, the Soviet Union fell and the Berlin Wall came down.  So, it was in Albertville where a unified Germany returned to the Olympics as a single team.  And it was in Albertville where the former Soviet republics, all of which were still so new they didn't have National Olympic Committees yet, first competed as the "Unified Team."

It was also the last Winter Olympics for Czechoslovakia, which split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia a year later, and the last Olympics period for a Communist Yugoslavia, which was already in the process of being broken up (Croatia and Slovenia were already independent and sent their own teams to Albertville).  The Yugoslav Olympic Committee was suspended shortly after the Games, so the country wasn't allowed to send a team to Barcelona, and, by the time it returned in Atlanta, "Yugoslavia" only consisted of Serbia and Montenegro.

From a sporting perspective, Albertville marked the last time the speed skating competition was held outdoors.  That actually caused tremendous problems.  There were several delays caused by weather or sun glare, and if temperatures got too high, there was water on the track.  As a result, the IOC insisted that the speed skating oval at all future Winter Olympics be indoors.  (The initial plan for Milan-Cortina featured an outdoor oval with a temporary roof, but concerns about the cost of the roof is what's led to the talk about moving speed skating to Torino.)

They also marked a change with regards to Olympic coverage in the U.S.  CBS had the U.S. TV rights to all three Winter Olympics in the 90s, of which Albertville was the first.  It was the first Winter Olympics not on ABC since 1972, and the first Olympics on CBS since 1960.  The coverage was, how do I put this?, not the best.  Tim McCarver and Paula Zahn were the primetime co-anchors.  That should tell you all you need to know.

There is one thing that CBS did, though, that would also prove to be ahead of its time.  They shared the rights with TNT, which broadcast events that weren't going to be shown on CBS during their daytime coverage.  This was, of course, pre-internet, so people in the U.S. got to see sports like luge and biathlon and cross country skiing extensively for the first time.  Nowadays, NBC shows everything live online and supplements its broadcast coverage with round-the-clock coverage on multiple cable channels.  But in 1992, it was revolutionary.

So, with the Olympics returning to France in just over 16 months, it's only fitting to look back on the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville.  Those Olympics, while unheralded then and even today, truly were ahead of their time.  In more ways than one.