Winter Olympic Games to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, and the host of the 2026 Winter Olympics will be selected on June 23rd, 2019. , no city in the southern hemisphere has applied to host the cold-weather-dependent Winter Olympics, which are held in February at the height of the southern hemisphere summer. To date, twelve countries have participated in every Winter Olympic Games – Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. Six of those countries have earned medals at every Winter Olympic Games – Austria, Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the United States. The
Winter Olympic Games was necessary to accommodate technological advances, however critics disputed this, alleging that the layout would incorporate the best possible venues for television broadcasts at the athletes' expense. The 1972 Winter Games, held in Sapporo, Japan, were the first to be hosted on a continent other than North America or Europe. The issue of professionalism was disputed during these Games when a number of alpine skiers were found to have participated in a ski camp at Mammoth Mountain in the United States; three days before the opening ceremony, IOC president Avery Brundage threatened to bar the skiers from competing in the