1976 Winter Olympics elections. Whistler would go on to be associated with neighbouring Vancouver's successful bid for the 2010 games. Salt Lake City offered to host the games, but the IOC, still reeling from the Denver rejection, declined and selected Innsbruck to host the 1976 Winter Olympics, which had hosted the 1964 Winter Olympics games twelve years earlier, on 5 February 1973. Salt Lake City would then host the Winter Olympics in 2002. The mascot of the 1976 Winter Olympics was "Schneemann", German for "snowman", a snowman in a red Tyrolean hat. Designed by Walter Pötsch, Schneeman was purported to represent the 1976
2010 Winter Olympics medal table Olympic Games it hosted, having failed to do so at both the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. In contrast to the lack of gold medals at these previous Olympics, the Canadian team finished first overall in gold medal wins, and became the first host nation—since Norway in 1952—to lead the gold medal count, with 14 medals. In doing so, it also broke the record for the most gold medals won by a NOC at a single Winter Olympics (the previous was 13, set by the Soviet Union in 1976 and matched by Norway