1960 Winter Olympics which made its selection to host the 1960 Winter Olympics a surprise. Wayne Poulsen and Alexander Cushing, who were inspired to an Olympic bid by a newspaper article mentioning that Reno, Nevada, and Anchorage, Alaska, had expressed interest in the Games. Poulsen, president of the Squaw Valley Development Company, petitioned California Governor Goodwin Knight to support a bid to host the Olympic Games. Knight's administration agreed and recommended that the California Legislature appropriate $1,000,000 to the effort. Based on the financial support received from the State of California, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) approved the bid on January 7,
Ice hockey at the Olympic Games Ice hockey at the Olympic Games Ice hockey tournaments have been staged at the Olympic Games since 1920. The men's tournament was introduced at the 1920 Summer Olympics and was transferred permanently to the Winter Olympic Games program in 1924, in France. The women's tournament was first held at the 1998 Winter Olympics. The Olympic Games were originally intended for amateur athletes. However, the advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union