Welcome to Cortina d'Ampezzo 1956 with the poster from these Winter Olympic Games.

Cortina 1956 Winter Olympics: Welcome to Cortina d’Ampezzo!

Release Date: January 19, 2026

Category: Podcast | Cortina 1956

Time to step back into Olympic history! Every year our listeners choose one historical Games for us to explore throughout the year. For our 6th edition of our Games History Moment, listeners have selected the Cortina 1956 Winter Olympic Games (officially, the full name of the city is Cortina d’Ampezzo), which is celebrating its 70th anniversary. Every month (with the exception of when Milano Cortina 2026 is on), we’ll look back and learn about these Olympics.

In our first episode, Jill looks at Cortina 1956’s bidding process, which was the last of its kind. She also examines the sports program and what additions were–and weren’t–made, and one demonstration sport that did not make a comeback.

Plus, Cortina had to do a lot of construction in the area to have Olympic-ready venues and spectator-friendly facilities. Did Italians in 1956 manage construction projects differently than their 2026 counterparts?

The Cortina 1956 Games also had a number of firsts, including live televised events. We get to some of the other firsts, including what could be the first Olympic appearance of a future VIP. Listen to find out who was there!

Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!

Sources used in this episode:

 

Photo: Olympics.com

 

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.

Cortina 1956 – Ep 1 – Welcome to the Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956 Winter Olympics

Jill Jaracz: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another season of History episodes for Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. If you love the games, we are the show for you.

All year long, we will be looking at the Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956 Winter Olympics, as that is the historical games that you listeners have chosen for us to cover and look back on.

I am Jill Jaracz, along with my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Hello, Alison. How are you?

Alison Brown: Al? I think it’s fun that we’re gonna be looking back at Italy as we’re going to Italy.

Jill Jaracz: Yes. That was the exciting, I was surprised that 1956 got chosen,

Alison Brown: but I think people had the same impression that they wanted to see what was done the last, not the last time we were in Italy, but the last time we were in Cortina.

The comparison and everybody loves those mid-century games. Yes. ’cause the stories from them are so [00:01:00] different than anything. And, and last time we had a much more modern games. You know, we were at 2000 last year, so this is gonna be a lot of fun going back to an old winter games.

Jill Jaracz: Exactly. So we will do one of these a month, except for we will not do them during the Olympics or Paralympics.

Cortina 1956: The bid process

So this month we wanted to do a little introduction, tell you a little bit about the history and the bid process of these games and how they got put together. And then when we come back from Italy, we’ll be able to. dive right into the competition and ceremonies. But yeah, wanted to give you a little, background so as you watch the events that are in the Cortina side of Milano Cortina 2026, you’ll know a little bit about what’s going on and how that history came to be. So, uh, Cortina Dam Petso, 1956, was the seventh winter games for the Olympics. In comparison, Milano Cortina is the 25th. So we are still in early days [00:02:00] of the Olympic winter games here.

Cortina was originally selected to host the 1944 Winter Olympics, which were canceled for World War ii. It bid again for 1952 and was beat out for by Oslo. And then in 1949, they tried again for 1956 and handily beat Colorado Springs, lake Placid in Montreal. And an interesting little side note is that 1956 was the last year that host cities were just chosen.

So the folks who talk about lack of transparency in today’s bidding process probably would’ve hated the backroom selection of Cortina 1956. That was the last time they were chosen that way. The 1960 elections were the first time candidate cities put together actual bid books, and it was also the first election where there could only be one candidate city per National Olympic Committee.

So we would no longer have this Colorado Springs versus Lake Placid effect going on.

Cortina 1956 official poster

The beauty and lure of Cortina d’Ampezzo

These are the first Olympics to be held [00:03:00] in Italy. And, uh, Cortina, Deso provided a stunning backdrop for the games. It’s in the Dolomites, or I think they call them the dolomite in Italian. And, they’re described in the game’s official report as such, and I will quote this.

The formation of the Dolomites is the strangest and most illogical that can be imagined and takes on forms and aspects, which frequently appear to be unreal. Lofty castles of stone, gigantic towers, colossal pyramids, dizzy blood, red precipices, forests of pinnacles and needles. Weird festoons dangling over the abyss, twisted turrets, held up by heaven knows what jungley.

Roaring waterfalls and rushing Torrance, forests of fur and large brilliant flowers and emeralds meadows. These are the elements which go to make up the wonderland of the Dolomites. Then there is the play of light upon them too, which produces effects of the purest magic from dawn to dusk, they [00:04:00] change color until at sunset they appear to flame heaven word like a splendid aurora Borealis.

Alison Brown: That sounds kind of nice.

Jill Jaracz: It it does sound lovely. And they, and as Ken Hanscomb told us before that they, they’re just stunning. So

Alison Brown: I don’t think they’re really exaggerating in this description because in the descriptions that we’re getting for these Olympics for 2026, you get a lot of that same hyperbole that.

Seems to be accurate. We’ll have to see what we’re able to see. Yes. But it sounds like it really is just one of the most beautiful places on earth.

How Cortina 1956 organizers chose the dates

Jill Jaracz: Yes. So in picking the dates for these Olympics, the organizing committee looked at 26 years worth of weather data and found that the best 10 day period. Was the end of January and beginning of February, so that’s why they chose January 26th through February 5th.

The official report noted that it turned out in spite of the scanty snowfall and the exceptional cold winter of 19 90, 19 55, 19 56, this was the best choice that [00:05:00] could have been made. So hopefully we’ll have decent snow also compared to the 17 plus two. Really three when you include the opening Ceremonies Day program.

Now it’s, it’s a much smaller games

The Cortina 1956 Winter Olympics sport program

back then in developing the sport program organizers got a lot of requests, quote unquote, someone suggested curling the ISU at the Soviet Union’s request, asked for women’s speed skating. The Federation International de. Which is bobsled. They asked for one man, Bob.

Alison Brown: Huh?

Jill Jaracz: And

Alison Brown: before Mono Bob, they wanted mono bobb.

Jill Jaracz: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And the uh, international Ski Federation asked for a 30 kilometer cross country ski race, a 3.5 kilometer. Ladies relay and shortening the Nordic combined to ski portion from 18 to 15 kilometers. [00:06:00] The official report explained as a general principle, we adhered to that of not enlarging the scope of the games, and in this we were upheld by the administration of the committee, which as is well known, never loses an opportunity for recommending economy, economy.

So they didn’t wanna spend the money to Edmore sports. And, and

Alison Brown: we are in the Avery Brundage years, right?

Jill Jaracz: We will get to this.

Alison Brown: Oh, get to this. Because he hated the winter games to begin with. Yes. So he’s certainly not gonna allow them to expand.

Jill Jaracz: Right. So this meant that They kept the same sports as Oslo 1952.

They denied all of the proposals except for the international ski federations for cross-country and, and Nordic combined. And, from then on the Nordic combined races are 15 kilometers. So this was the turning point for that decision. The other difference from Oslo 1952 is that Cortina had no demonstration.

Sports [00:07:00] Oslo had bandi. A combination of ice hockey and soccer. So this was on a football sized ice rink on skates with sticks and a ball.

Alison Brown: That sounds like something a bunch of kids in Wisconsin came up with

Jill Jaracz: or I. Swedes and Norwegians in Scandinavia, same thing. So ultimately, Corina’s program had eight sports, 24 Olympic titles, of which 14 were for skiing, two for bobsled, four for speed skating, three for figure skating, and one for ice hockey.

Getting Cortina ready for the Olympics

Corina itself was a tourist town, not necessarily set up for world class competition, so it needed some work. They had no ice stadium. The ski jump was out of date. The ski runs did not meet international requirements. The bobsled run was far from complete in spite of recent repair. End quote,

Alison Brown: gee, I see a, uh, a little bit of a [00:08:00] parallel, shall we say, and

Jill Jaracz: there was no speed skating rink.

So Oopsies, they built a main rink stadium, and I’ve seen some video of this. It’s not a stadium as we think of stadium now. It is a open air ice rink with three sides of uh, stands. From the the rink view, it looks like it would be a chalet like look on the outside. So very tall and it looks kind of cool, but it is definitely an outdoor stadium.

They replaced the ski jump, which was demolished on April 15th, 1955, and finished in September, 1955. Officially opened on December 8th, 1955.

Alison Brown: The Italians get it done, but at the last possible second. Right. Wow. And how did the I, the, the IOC not look back in history and say, [00:09:00] geez, Italy has had two winter games and we keep having construction problems, but you know what, for 2026, we’re not gonna have any construction problems.

Jill Jaracz: Right, right, right.

all of the venues were really centralized. Within walking distance of each other, with the exception of speed skating, which was 15 kilometers away at Lake, uh, mis arena. And the ISU International Skating Union was not keen on being that far away. It was also a natural rink formed by a frozen lake, and they were not thrilled with that idea either.

And they preferred that Cortina would build an artificial track in town. And it’s interesting because we still had, uh, natural. Outdoor rinks for quite some time after this. ISU lost that battle and they were the outliers at the games needed to do some other construction as well. They needed road repairs.

They needed to improve and extend the sewage system. They installed streetlights, they built parking lots. [00:10:00] Uh, they had to construct sections of the bypass. They had to open some public bathrooms, and they organized new bus routes. There was not a village for the athletes. Instead, athletes and officials stayed in 42 hotels and 10 guest houses across the area.

If you were one of the 49 IOC members or part of their family, you stayed at the hotel Mira Monte Majestic, which is still standing, but it seems to be closed, and it’s been closed for a few years and it seems like it, it needed some repairs and got shut down. So unsure about the status of that, but it still exists.

Every lady received a bouquet of fresh flowers from the Legian Riviera, and a gift bottle of perfume from the famous Borsa company of Par.

Alison Brown: So despite the sewage issues, there was a lot of things that smelled nice.

Jill Jaracz: Yes. And these gifts were, that

Alison Brown: why they gave the perfume and the flowers [00:11:00] because they were having problems with the sewage system.

Jill Jaracz: Don’t, I don’t know. these gifts were likely part of the funds that came from Corina’s. 1956 is primary funding source Italy’s football lottery. So they did get money that way.

Olympic firsts at Cortina 1956

first for these games, this was the first time the Soviet Union competed at a Winter Olympics at the IOCs request. The two Germanys competed together and they would split into East and west at Chernobyl 1968.

but they did compete as one country this time. And overall there were 32 countries, 821 athletes, 687 men, 134 women. Another big first television, because facilities were in short supply, spectator numbers were going to be limited, and that meant regular television coverage would be very important for these games.

this was the first time the Gameses were televised live. They [00:12:00] were in black and white, and the live broadcast was available in eight European countries. They were also recorded on film and daily coverage. Was processed in an apartment by the ICE stadium.

They’ve processed it overnight in the morning, drove it to the local airport, flew to Rome, and from there it got shipped internationally. So if you were in North America, you got your TV coverage about a day later.

uh, radio Televise Italiana, which is RAI. They had the broadcasting rights for both TV and radio. They got really into camera placement and coverage to better showcase the sport from different angles. We’ll probably get into that in future episodes.

Alison Brown: Nice. Oh, I love that early television stuff, because it was, how do you film.

Speed skating so that it’s interesting to watch, you know, how do you film figure skating so that you can really see, and they’re doing this all outside. Yeah. So the, the difficulty of. Filming outside then plays into how do you play sports. So I’m sure there [00:13:00] was a lot of advances made and and figured out at these games.

Oh, that’ll be fun to talk about.

Jill Jaracz: As you mentioned earlier, this is the first Olympics for IOC President Avery Brundage. He was elected at Helsinki 52. So can you imagine going four years and then getting your first Olympic Games?

Alison Brown: Well, Avery Brundage was just sitting there twiddling his thumbs as we know, you know, not causing any trouble, you know, keeping his mouth shut, being so well behaved, being a loyal husband, you know, all those great things.

We know about Avery Brundage

Jill Jaracz: and there was one other that I’ve seen so far. One other VIP to be also at these games.

Alison Brown: I don’t even have a guess.

Jill Jaracz: Chef de Mission. For Spain

Alison Brown: Juan. Antonio Samaranch.

Jill Jaracz: Yes.

Alison Brown: Oh, of course. Oh, how fantastic. Our first, our first appearance of Wand.

Jill Jaracz: So now we have a little background for these games.[00:14:00]

We go to Cortina in a few weeks to read. Leave the Olympic spirit for Milano Corina 2026. It will be a fun year. I

Alison Brown: think this is gonna be fun. I’m excited.

Jill Jaracz: Yes. So sources for this, uh, game bids, multiple articles from the Journal of Olympic History. Uh, David Miller’s, the Official History of the Olympic Games in the IOC Athens to Beijing 9 18, 94 to 2008.

NBC Olympics, the official report of Cortina dso, uh, 1956 edia. a couple of reports from the Olympic Studies Center. olympics.com. Summit Daily. So we will have a link to those in our show notes on our website. You can always find out where we get our information from. So buckle up friends, we are in for a good ride.

Alison Brown: Bonna.