1984 Winter Olympics session of the International Olympic Committee in Athens, Greece. Sarajevo was selected over Sapporo, Japan (which hosted the games 12 years earlier) by a margin of three votes. Gothenburg was the first city in Sweden to lose a Winter Olympics bid, as other Swedish cities such as Falun and Östersund would later lose their consecutive bids to Calgary, Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano, and Salt Lake City respectively. Sarajevo, capital of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, was part of the united Yugoslavia at the time. The torch relay for the 1984 Winter Olympics started in Olympia and then proceeded by airplane to Dubrovnik.
Bids for the 1976 Winter Olympics of government following 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 later host the 2002 Winter Olympics. Bids for the 1976 Winter Olympics The selection process for the 1976 Winter Olympics consisted of four bids, and saw Denver, United States, selected ahead of Sion, Switzerland;