The Winter Olympic Games is a sporting event which occurs once every four years. The first celebration of the Winter Olympics was held in Chamonix, France, in 1924. The original sports were alpine and cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping and speed skating. The Games were held every four years from 1924 until 1936, after which they were interrupted by World War II. The Olympics resumed in 1948 and were celebrated every four years. The Winter and Summer Olympic Games were held in the same years until 1992, after a 1986 decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to place the Summer and Winter Games on separate four-year cycles in alternating even-numbered years. Because of the change, the next Winter Olympics after 1992 were in 1994.
The Winter Games have evolved since their inception. Sports have been added and some of them, such as luge, short track speed skating and freestyle skiing, have earned a permanent spot on the Olympic programme. Others, such as speed skiing, bandy and skijoring, were demonstration sports but never incorporated as Olympic sports. The rise of television as a global medium for communication enhanced the profile of the Games. It created an income stream, via the sale of broadcast rights and advertising, which has become lucrative for the IOC. This allowed outside interests, such as television companies and corporate sponsors, to exert influence. The IOC has had to address several criticisms, internal scandals, the use of performance enhancing drugs by Winter Olympians, as well as a political boycott of the Winter Olympics. Nations have used the Winter Games to showcase the claimed superiority of their political systems.
The 1924 Winter Olympics, officially known as the I Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event which was held in 1924 in Chamonix, France. Originally called Semaine Internationale des Sports d'Hiver ('International Winter Sports Week') and held in association with the 1924 Summer Olympics, the sports competitions held at the foot of Mont Blanc in Chamonix, Haute-Savoie, France between January 25 and February 5, 1924, organized by the French Olympic Committee, were in retrospect designated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the I Olympic Winter Games.
The tradition of holding the Winter Olympics in the same year as the Summer Olympics would continue until 1994, when began the current practice of holding a Winter Olympics in the second year after each Summer Olympics.
Although Figure Skating had been an Olympic event in both London and Antwerp, and Ice Hockey had been an event in Antwerp, the winter sports had always been rather limited by the season. In 1921, on the convention of the IOC in Lausanne, there was a call for equality for winter sports, and after much discussion it was decided to organize an 'international week of winter sport' in 1924 in Chamonix.
