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
Winter Olympic Games Games as he insisted that they were no longer amateurs having benefited financially from their status as athletes. Eventually only Austrian Karl Schranz, who earned more than the other skiers, was excluded from the competition. Canada did not send teams to the 1972 or 1976 ice hockey tournaments in protest at not being able to use players from professional leagues. It also accused the Soviet Union of using state-sponsored athletes, who were de facto professionals. Francisco Fernández Ochoa became the first (and, as of 2018, only) Spaniard to win a Winter Olympic gold medal when he triumphed in the slalom.