1998 Winter Olympics

The XVIII Olympic Winter Games were held in 1998 in Nagano, Japan. Other candidate cities were Aosta, Italy; Jaca, Spain; Östersund, Sweden; and Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The selection was in 1991 in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

Highlights

XC skier Bjørn Dæhlie of Norway won three gold medals in Nordic skiing to become the first winter Olympian to earn eight career gold medals and twelve total medals.
Snowboarding and curling debuted as official sports and women's ice hockey was introduced to the Olympic program.
NHL players were able to compete in men's ice hockey due to a three week suspension of the competition.
Tara Lipinski, 15, won the women's figure skating title to become the youngest champion in an individual event in the history of the Winter Olympics.
Alpine skier Hermann Maier (Austria) survived a fall in the downhill and went on to gold in the super-g and giant slalom.
Speed skaters Gianni Romme and Marianne Timmer won two gold medals each for the Netherlands; 5 out of 10 titles in speed skating went to the Netherlands.
Snowboarder Ross Rebagliati won the gold medal, after initially being disqualified for marijuana usage.
Azerbaijan, Kenya, the Republic of Macedonia, Uruguay, and Venezuela made their first appearance at these Olympic Winter Games.

See the medal winners, ordered by sport:

Top medal-collecting nations:
(for the full table, see 1998 Winter Olympics medal count)

(Host nation in bold.)

1998 Winter Olympics medal count					Image:Olympic-rings.png
Pos	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Image:Germany flag large.png Germany	12	9	8	29
2	Image:Norway flag large.png Norway	10	10	5	25
3	Image:Russia flag large.png Russian Federation	9	6	3	18
4	Image:Canada flag large.png Canada	6	5	4	15
5	Image:USA flag.png United States	6	3	4	13
6	Image:Netherlands flag large.png Netherlands	5	4	2	11
7	Image:Japan flag large.png Japan	5	1	4	10
8	Image:Austria flag large.png Austria	3	5	9	17
9	Image:Korea unified flag.png Korea	3	1	2	6
10	Image:Flag of Italy.svg Italy	2	6	2	10