1960 Winter Olympics 1960 Winter Olympics The 1960 Winter Olympics, officially known as the VIII Olympic Winter Games, was a winter multi-sport event held between February 18–28, 1960 in Squaw Valley, California, United States. Squaw Valley was chosen to host the Games at the 1956 meeting of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It was an undeveloped resort in 1955, so from 1956 to 1960 the infrastructure and all of the venues were built at a cost of US$80,000,000. It was designed to be intimate, allowing spectators and competitors to walk to nearly all the venues. Squaw Valley hosted athletes from thirty nations who
1960 Winter Olympics status of some of the players overshadowed the event. Canadian Olympic officials objected to the use of "professional amateurs" by Eastern Bloc countries, and especially the Soviet Union. They alleged that the Soviets were giving their elite hockey players phantom jobs in the military that allowed them to play hockey full-time, which gave Soviet teams an advantage that they used to dominate Olympic hockey tournaments for nearly 30 years. This issue started coming to light during the 1960 Games and would culminate in a Canadian boycott of the Olympic hockey tournament at the 1972 and 1976 Winter Olympics. The team