#Olympic Winter Games 1994 Lillehammer

[maryegallagher]

Lillehammer - An Ideal Getaway

by Deirdre Frost   In so many ways, Lillehammer is a favorite destination for Norwegians and for those with a passion for outdoor sports. Popular with tourists is the exhilarating luge ride down the Olympic-grade toboggan track. Other exciting activities are visiting the ski jumping arena or bobsledding and cross-country skiing in the Olympic Park. The Olympics torch bearer is visible from the…

[the-olympics-olympics]

Lillehammer 1994

Sparagmite partially covered in gold, one side showing the Olympic rings and host details, the other depicting the sport in which the medal was won and the Games emblem

Torino 2006

Obverse: Graphic elements of the Games. Reverse: Pictogram of the specific event. Edge: words "XX Olympic Winter Games" in Italian, English, and French Shape: Circular with a hole representing a piazza

[branloaf]

Some of the tags in my Summer Olympics poll mention the winter games so I thought I'd make a second one.

[ewzzy]

I've got this double size treasury comic called Spider-Man vs The Hulk at the Winter Olympics. It came out December 1979 in time for the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid in upstate New York.

It's barely a story and very much a cash-in because the Olympics where in the USA that year. Still, I do enjoy Olympic athletes getting super weapons and forced to do evil.

This is back when Winter and Summer Olympics happened in the same year. 1994's Lillehammer games were the first to not be the same year as summer games. For now it's still 1980 and that means we've got a Summer Olympics comic to promote!

Except those summer games were held in Moscow and the USA lead a boycott where 66 countries no-showed the event. I love when there's an ad promoting a book that never comes out. Okay, so we'll delay to 1984 when it's in Los Angeles... lol no the USSR will boycott that. So before we let that ruin our major promotion we'll redraw/rewrite enough of the story to turn in into Contest of Champions!

Editor Tom Defalco claims the main reason the book ended up getting published at all was inker Pablo Marcos wasn't told to stop inking the pages and the book was half done before anyone else noticed.

[verydesperatehousewife]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Vintage Ray-Ban 1994 1996 Olympic Games Sponsor Key Fob Ring Keychain Alloy Meta.

[jontycrane]

Lillehammer

Best known for hosting the 1994 Winter Olympic Games, Lillehammer is a quiet and attractive small town at the head of Lake Mjøsa, Norway’s largest lake. It was a pleasant place to spend a day or so, very walkable and low key. The Norwegian Olympic Museum is a good place to start. It isn’t huge but tells well the story of the Olympic Games from Ancient Greece through to the modern day, before…

[vintageolympics]

Noriaki Kasai of Japan, Lillehammer 1994

PyeongChang 2018 will be his 8th Olympics.

(source)

[koikishu]

Parade of Nations - Slovakia

French: Slovaquie // English: Slovakia // Japanese: スロバキア (Surobakia)

    Slovakia formed its National Olympic Committee in 1992 and participated in its first Olympics as a country at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. They haven’t hosted any Olympic Games, but they’ve participated in 6 Summer Games and 7 Winter Games. The Olympic sports in which Slovakia has medaled are Athletics, Canoeing, Judo, Shooting, Swimming, and Wrestling.

Kimono Maker: Norishige Sugimura/ 杉村 典重

    “Behind the beech forest is the world heritage site "Spiski Castle", which has been the setting for many historical events. You can feel the magnificent spread of Slovakia in the "Tatra Mountains" seen between the clouds. Various colors create a mysterious world view that does not make you feel the seasons and time. The beech tree can be seen in the "canoe paddle" that is flourishing in Slovakia, and the individuality of the author who is good at deformed design is demonstrated.”[1]

Obi Maker: Obihiro Co., Ltd./ おび弘

    “We interviewed from the mosaic painting of the church of St. Elsabeto in Bratislava, the capital, and carefully woven it by the technique of hand-woven spliced book bag.” [1]

Bibliography

Source 1 – Kimono Project for Slovakia

(https://kimono.piow.jp/nation/185.html)

Index Page – IOWKP x Tokyo 2020 Parade of Nations

[bongaboi]

Harding-Kerrigan Redux

When people talk about the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan mess, what often gets lost is that the scheme worked. Sort of.

Kerrigan was attacked by two men intent on boosting the Olympic chances of her U.S. teammate and figure-skating nemesis, Harding. (Harding later pleaded guilty to helping cover up the Keystone Kops plot.)

But though the story had been leading newscasts for weeks and most of the details were already public knowledge, Harding was still allowed to compete at Lillehammer 1994. For a moment there, despite everything, Harding could have come out on top.

It didn’t turn out that way. Harding busted a lace at the Winter Games, cried to the judges and finished eighth. Kerrigan finished second and got caught on a hot mic saying “This is so corny” as she was paraded through Disney World. Neither competed at the highest level again.

On one level, it’s a parable about the corrosive effects of aspiration and hubris.

But if you’re more a fan of Machiavelli than Aesop’s Fables, there’s another way of looking at it. That it wasn’t so much a colossally stupid idea (which it was) as a poorly executed one. Without drawing any direct parallels between the two events, that brings us to the curious case of the Paris Saint-Germain women’s soccer team.

PSG is the best team in the best women’s league in the world. Like its men’s counterpart, PSG Féminine is a lavishly funded super team constructed without regard to profit margins. The goal isn’t just winning. It is stockpiling as much talent as possible. That talent includes Canadians Ashley Lawrence, Stephanie Labbé and Jordyn Huitema.

Things didn’t totally work out for PSG last year, so the club went on a buying spree. One of its acquisitions was veteran midfielder Kheira Hamraoui.

Hamraoui’s arrival punted another PSG midfielder, Aminata Diallo, onto the substitutes bench.

Having too many good players and not enough spots on the field is a typical problem for the richest soccer teams. Whenever you hear that top player X wants out of top team Y, this is usually the source of the friction. Often, these fights become ugly.

But according to reports in France, things may have jumped a level in this instance.

The French sports bible, L’Équipe, says matters took a turn for the film noir last week. The PSG squad got together for a team dinner. Afterward, Diallo offered to give Hamraoui a lift.

As they pulled up outside Hamraoui’s home, two men in balaclavas set upon them. They pulled Hamraoui out of the car and beat her with iron bars. The assault particularly targeted her legs. The attackers stole nothing and left.

Hamraoui was treated for cuts and bad bruises and sent to the injured reserve. The incident was news, but only in the sense of reminding the French public that bad things happen to famous people as well.

On Tuesday, Diallo took Hamraoui’s place in the starting team for a Champions League match against Real Madrid. On Wednesday morning, she was arrested by police in Versailles. At the moment, she is suspected of involvement in the attack.

“The club is paying close attention to the progress of the proceedings and will study what action to take,” PSG said in a statement.

They won’t be the only ones.

First things first – nothing’s been proved one way or the other. Maybe this is a terrible mix-up, or someone looking to stitch up a blameless person in order to get an easier ride for themselves.

But let’s just say that if the details as reported are actual facts, it doesn’t look great.

What amazes me is not that such a thing can happen, but that it happens so rarely. There is no glory in our culture quite like athletic glory. You’d imagine people who are just one person removed from it might go to unhealthy, even cruel, lengths to get some for themselves.

Combine glory with the promise of money, and that’s a combo that could turn the best of us bad.

If we want to see where this goes from here, we reach back nearly 30 years to the Kerrigan-Harding template.

By the end of the week, Hamraoui and Diallo will be the two most famous women’s soccer players in the world. If the story gets any more gaudy, they may soon be the two best-known female athletes, full stop. That isn’t a good thing for either of them.

The story contains too much tabloid catnip not to be debased immediately to its most lurid components. This won’t be about one person’s harrowing experience of being set upon and put in fear of her life. It’ll be about two crude feminine stereotypes coming into conflict.

Abetted by the content-hungry public – including the part that will howl loudest about the unfairness of it all – the media will pick over both their lives until there’s nothing left but bone. The best-case scenario is that it ends quickly and justly. The worst case, for all involved, is that it drags on for months.

It’s not polite to say it, but this sort of thing drives interest in pro sports, in the same way Kerrigan-Harding drove interest in figure skating. (Their head-to-head showdown in Norway was, at the time, the sixth most-watched program in U.S. television history.)

Every once in a while, we need to be reminded that athletes aren’t just going through the motions and collecting cheques. They will do anything – in a very few cases, literally so – to get to the top.

It’s not a valorous instinct. It shouldn’t applauded or encouraged. But it does reorient the audience’s perception of the stakes involved. And whether we will admit it, it makes us want to watch even more.

Follow us on Twitter: @globe_sports

[the-olympics-olympics]

Tom was named after Brazilian musician Tom Jobim, one of the writers of the song "The Girl from Ipanema" (along with Vinicius de Moraes, the namesake of Olympic mascot Vinicius). Vinicius's design represents Brazilian wildlife, combining "the agility of cats, sway of monkeys and grace of birds." The character's arms and legs can stretch unlimited distances. Vinicius's mission is "to spread joy throughout the world and celebrate the friendship that flourishes between people from all over the world" at the Olympic Games.

Sondre is based on the trolls depicted in Scandinavian folklore. The one-legged skiing troll was created as a result of a nationwide competition among schools, with the winning design handed in by Janne Solem. In a separate competition, the name “Sondre” was chosen for the Paralympic mascot as a reference to Sondre Norheim, one of the pioneers of modern skiing.

Sumi was the mascot for the 2010 Winter Paralympics. He is an animal guardian spirit with the wings of the mythical Thunderbird and legs of an American black bear who wears a killer whale-like hat in the artistic style of the Haida people.

[superchartisland]

Winter Olympics (Tiertex/US Gold, Mega Drive, 1994)

When writing about Daley Thompson’s Olympic Challenge back in ‘88, I said the following:

“After an initial rush, sports minigame collections were not to prove a perennial fixture of the top of the charts. Quadrennial, though? That’s another matter. The Olympics and the large proportion of the country watching a collection of different short bits of sports coverage, feeling inspired to do vaguely related things, is an unmissable opportunity.”

Could quadrennial become biennial? For 1994, the Winter Olympics switched from being the same year as the summer edition to occurring midway through its four-year cycle, gaining more space to itself. Here was another opportunity for related video game collections. US Gold -- they of the previously dodgy approach to the football World Cup licence -- went to more of an effort to create a playable tie-in that reflected Lillehammer ‘94. Alongside watching the bronze-winning return of Torvill and Dean on TV, enough Brits went and bought the game to make it the best-selling in the country.

If you’re keeping up with where I am up to in AAA, or rather when I am up to, you will have spotted the deliberate mistake there. Winter Olympics was a #1 game, but in 1995, more than a year after the Olympics had finished and the game was released. This is weird. Most of the #1 games I’m covering top the charts when they are newer even when they aren’t tied to specific outside events. The British Library’s haphazard holding of back issues of Computer Trade Weekly is far more complete for 1995 than any other year until 2000, so I have a weekly picture of what was happening, but this is one of the times it provides more questions than answers. No other game based on the Winter Olympics has made it to #1, but Winter Olympics spent several weeks at the top of the console chart in April 1995, and the reason is a mystery. 

With the downhill skiing season finishing the previous month, and presumably the BBC’s 1995 series of Ski Sunday along with it, there would likely have been no winter sports on TV at the time. The weather for the month was ‘very dry, sunny and mild’ which doesn’t sound like a contributing factor. The lack of specific answers turns me to more general ones. Alongside the charts, those issues of Computer Trade Weekly provided occasional commentary that, while console games made up half the games market, the console chart was slow as sales were spread out and there were few big new releases. On that basis my best guess for the Winter Olympics phenomenon is a prosaic one that it just got a particularly sharp discount at Future Zone or something.

Whatever their reasons for buying Winter Olympics, what did its players get? A lot of details specific to the Olympics, for one thing. The Viking children that were the official mascots for the games are everyone in the menus, which is no bad thing, and if you want to know what the exact venues were for events it will fill you in too. Without a star like Daley Thompson to front things up (figure skating, the biggest draw for Britsh fans, isn’t even in the game), the place and event have to star.

Alongside that, it’s more of a celebration and less of a challenge. You can play through a complete Olympics of the ten events on offer, and the worst that will happen if you crash and spectacularly faceplant in all of them is that you will watch your country stay stuck to the bottom of the medal table. You still get to play them all. Individual events tend towards being simple in terms of controls and more complex in terms of what you do with them, which is a pretty good design philosophy. Bobsleigh and luge have a bit of button mashing for the run up, for old time’s sake, but after that you are just steering left and right. In the various downhill skiing events, you’re doing the directions alone. That’s more than half of the events covered. The progression comes from the challenge of just trying to make your way to the end of the tricky courses, and then trying to build in time gains on top of that. It’s not easy, but it’s easy to get into and have fun with. 

What it’s missing, perhaps, is a bit more personality. Everything feels a little too functional, too in keeping with being an Official Licenced Product. Despite the extra technological power at its disposal, there are fewer moments of beauty than the pixels of Winter Games provided a decade earlier. Not for the last time, it’s a decent game that relies on enthusiasm for the associated event to bring it up to an extra level. And enthusiasm can’t have been that high among all those only buying it a year later.

Gallup cartridge chart, Computer Trade Weekly 10 April 1995 (chart for week to 1 April 1995) 

[disappearing-rose]

Heyya darling! Such a cool non-US ask game, so here a bunch of numbers for you: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 20, 26, 28 (just wanna know your favourites, I kow your country has plenty of beautiful, beautiful nature :P) xoxo, - alexa

Ahh, Alexa, honey, thank you so much for the ask!❤ Now, this is a long one so *cracks knuckles* brace yourselves.

1. Favorite place in your country?

Well, my favorite place would have to be the island I live on. I like places where you are close to nature, with trees and mountains and, most importantly, the sea. So my home island is definitely my favorite place in Norway, by far. No place like home, right? ;-)

2. Prefer spending your holidays in your country or abroad?

Hmm... a little bit of both. The only time we really travel is during the summer holidays. For example, right now I'm in Crete, boiling and wanting to shed my own skin, it's so fucking hot. But sometimes we've just driven down to Oslo to spend a couple of days there, exploring our capital. But during Easter and Christmas we stay at home. So while I like getting out of the country sometimes, I always look forward to going back home. In case you can't tell already, I'm a home body;-)

4. Favorite dish specific for your country?

Does Grandiosa (Norwegian frozen pizza brand) count? We don't eat much traditional food in my family, but one of the weirdest and coolest to tell people about is "smalahove" ( boiled sheep's head with eyes and (sometimes) the brain intact. And everything is eaten).

5. Favorite song in your native language?

Ooh, I like both "God Morgen, Min Kjære" (Good Morning, My Love) by Benny Borg, though I listen to Hanne Sørvaag's version the most, and Sissel Kyrkjebø's "Se Ilden Lyse" which also has an English version, "Fire In Your Heart". It was the song for the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer and they are both beautiful. "God Morgen, Min Kjære" always makes me emotional and "Se Ilden Lyde" makes me patriotic and long for the winter and snow.

7. Three words from your native language that you like the most?

Kjærleik (love), the nynorsk version of the bokmål word 'kjærlighet'.

Æva (enternity), the nynorsk version of the bokmål word 'evighet'.

Melankoli (melancoly).

(For reference, we have two written languages in Norway: nynorsk and bokmål. Nynorsk is based the dialects around villages and places/ islands away from the city, like where I live, and bokmål is based on the Danish language and how they spoke in upper class Oslo in the 1800's. They also have bokmål- like dialects in eastern Norway today. The words are spelled and pronounced differently, but the meanings are the same, in Norwegian and English).

8. Do you get confused with other nationalities? If so, which ones and by whom?

We often get confused by Americans ( I think, but don't take my word for it) as being Swedish, as some think that Norway is the capital of Sweden. Though, if you wanna get technical, we used to be in a union with Sweden, from ca. 1814 to 1905, after they won us from Denmark.

Psst! I recommend you read up on Norwegian history, especially from around the middle ages to the present day, it's SUPER interesting!

9. Which of your neighboring countries would you like to visit most/ know best?

I'd love to visit Russia and learn their language, I think it's so beautiful. I'd also like to visit Sweden, as my great- great- grandfather was from Sweden and I'd like to improve my Swedish as well.

10. Most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

"Faen!" It means "damn" in English, but in Norwegian it's actually a fancier word/name for Satan/ the devil. I also like the phrase "faen i helvete", which litterally means 'the devil in hell" and I use it quite frequently.

11. Favorite native writer/poet?

I love Henrik Ibsen to death! There is a reason why people call him the second best writer to ever live, after Shakespeare.

13. Does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

We probably have a few, but the only one that comes to mind is that we don't open our Christmas presents on Christmas Day/ Boxing day morning. In stead, on Christmas Eve, we dress up all fine, you know, dresses and suitpants and shirts, and eat Christmas dinner. Then we gather together and one person gets up, read out the labels on the presents and hand them out to the person they are for. And then, when everyone has gotten their presents, we open them together, not one by one. Then we have dessert later and enjoy family time. Sometimes it's just my immediate family, sometimes it's my entire mother's side as well.

16. Which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

Ohh, this is a good question. There are quite a few that I hate, and it's difficult to pick just one. The one about polar bears roaming free in the streets is one that always irks me, but is also funny. (BTW, they don't, at least not in the main land. The only polar bears that exists in Norway is on Svalbard, an island very north of Norway.) Or the one about everyone being tall, blonde and blue-eyed, which is not the case. (Yes, I'm blonde, but I'm 5' 4" and my eyes are green).

Another one is that people consider us rude. That is not the case. We consider it polite to not unnecessarily bother a stranger with, for example, small talk and we just respect other people's personal space. It doesn't mean we are cold or rude.

However, I do somewhat agree with the fact that we are a 'cold' people, just not in the way people think. We are very... introverted, I suppose you could say. For example, we don't ask strangers for help unless we absolutely have to and we generally avoid sitting next to people on the buss, prefering to sit alone. And we don't randomly go up to people we don't know and strike up a conversation about the weather, which is why we might seem a little frazzled when strangers/ tourists ask us questions or for directions. We just prefer our own space and company. But we are a very, very polite people who are happy to help, despite our perhaps confused exterior, and who smile quite a bit. Sure, you might run into some grumpy people, but who hasn't had a bad day in their life?

19. Do you like your country's flag and/or emblem? What about the national anthem?

🎶Det er Norge i rødt, hvitt og blått!🎶 I love our country's flag, it always make me exited to see it during the Olympics or while walking around the streets in other countries. I love our national anthem as well! The lyrics, written by the wonderful Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, contains so much love for our country and describes it so well. The melody, I have to admit, is a little slow and melancolic- sounding compared to other nations', but I can't imagine it being any other way, nor do I want to!

20. Which sport is The Sport in your country?

Many, many, maaany people will say soccer, and I suppose they are right, as it is the sport with the most supporters and what they talk about the most. Personally though, I prefer handball, mostly because it's a sport at which our national team is actually good at. Our women's team has won both the European Championships and World Championship several times through the years. Has the soccers teams ever done that? Yeah, I don't think so, my friend.

26. Does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? What do you think about the portrayal?

I don't think so, at least not a lot. And if they do I think they often portray us as barbaric Vikings, stupid blondes, or bad at English. And I've never seen an American movie/ tv- show where they portray someone Norwegian, so I don't really know what I think about it.

28. Does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? Do you have favorites?

If anyone has ever seen photos of litterally anywhere in Norway, you'll know that we have the most stunningly beautiful nature. Tall, strong mountains, long, winding rivers, big lakes you can swim in, deep, long fjords, small waterfalls. Norway is full of nature and the nature alone is worth a visit. As for favorites, I can't choose as I barely seen it all, but the Geiranger fjord is gorgeous, though packed with tourists and cruise ships in the summer, but its beauty never fails to amaze me, espacially from a high vantage point.

PS: If you are ever going to visit Norway, I suggest getting out of the big towns like Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim, as the most stunning nature is along the roads, highways and smaller towns. Also, most of our fjords are situated along the entire west coast, so be prepared to take ferry boats to cross them.

[verydesperatehousewife]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Vintage Ray-Ban 1994 1996 Olympic Games Sponsor Key Fob Ring Keychain Alloy Meta.

[snowshoe1980]

I was a huge fan girl of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer Norway. There was so much action and drama that olympics (Picabo Street, Tonya Harding, etc) but a big take a way for me was Norway, the country itself. I remember the newscasters talking about how people just cross country ski from town to town and I was so captivated by that idea. Flash forward some 25 years and I’m living in a place where I can legit do that. Straight from my door to so much just via the snow.... 14 year old me (and current me) is loving it. Also, when faced with which cx skis to purchase, I naturally gravitated towards the one named Lillehammer. https://www.instagram.com/p/B5jvRsDFoBZ/?igshid=1o7wsjg4y0dg

[humor-y-videojuegos]

Winter Olympics: Lillehammer '94 Año: 1994 Plataformas: Amiga, Game Boy, Game Gear, Mega Drive, Sega Master System, SNES, PC

[vintageolympics]

Alexei Urmanov, Lillehammer 1994