The Small Town Olympics

     After her Bronze winning performance in the Women's Super Combined, Julia Mancuso remarked that she drew her Olympic inspiration from growing up around Squaw Valley, site of the 1960 Winter Games.  While all Olympics are unique in their own right, the Squaw Valley Games might have had the most interesting story of any games on record.

     In 1955, Alexander Cushing owned 2,000 acres of land in a small area called Squaw Valley, about 185 miles northeast of San Francisco.  The area contained a meager ski area, with one chair lift, two rope tows, and a 50 room lodge.  Then Cushing caught wind of possible bids by Reno and Anchorage, and his mind started working.  He figured that if those towns could get the Games , then he could throw a Games at his place as well.  Using some influence, he convinced the Governor of California to back the bid, which got Cushing another $1 Million.  This convinced the United States Olympic Committee to accept the bid, at which point it went before the International Olympic Committee.  Initially, the Games were awarded on a probationary basis, but on April 4, 1956 they were awarded to Squaw Valley outright.  This obviously annoyed the other traditional European powers who had bid for the Games, but their outrage was pointless, the Games belonged to Squaw Valley.

     Now the task at hand was readying the resort for the Games, which was quite a tall order.  The village was so sparsely populated that when the hand off came at the end of the 1956 Games, an IOC member had to stand in for the mayor of Squaw Valley.  By the time 1960 rolled around, the area had been transformed into a world class resort, complete with hotels, restaurants, public works buildings, and athletic venues, all ensconced in the city of Squaw Valley.  One divergence was the lack of a Bobsled run.  The high costs and the lack of entrants conspired to have the Bobsled contest left off the program, thus making the 1960 Games the first and only ones without a Bobsled competition.  There was one final hiccup on the way to the Games though, as the United States threatened to deny visas to Communist athletes in 1957.  After the IOC stated that they would revoke the Games if that move was pulled, the Communists got their visas.

     Once the Games started, the innovations didn't stop.  These were the first Games with an official Olympic Anthem, with the IOC having adopted one in 1958.  Also, these Games were the first to have their television rights sold, which were acquired by CBS for $50,000(by comparison, NBC spent $793 Million to secure the rights for the 2004 Games).  The presence of CBS also had another impact.  On one of the runs of the Men's Slalom, there was a dispute as to the timing of the competitors.  The judges asked to see the CBS feed of the heat, which gave the network the idea to eventually roll out the first Instant Replay.  The 1960 Winter Olympics go down in history as one of the more interesting back stories, as well as serving as an Olympic inspiration to athletes 50 years later.