Winter Olympic Games event at the 1948 Games in Switzerland. It included cross-country skiing, shooting, downhill skiing, fencing and horse riding. The table below uses official data provided by the IOC. Bibliography Winter Olympic Games The Winter Olympic Games () is a major international sporting event held once every four years for sports practised on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics, were held in Chamonix, France. The modern Olympic games were inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded
Olympic Games Evangelos Zappas, a wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist, first wrote to King Otto of Greece, in 1856, offering to fund a permanent revival of the Olympic Games. Zappas sponsored the first Olympic Games in 1859, which was held in an Athens city square. Athletes participated from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Zappas funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic Stadium so that it could host all future Olympic Games. The stadium hosted Olympics in 1870 and 1875. Thirty thousand spectators attended that Games in 1870, though no official attendance records are available for the 1875 Games. In 1890, after attending the Olympian