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America's First Winter Olympics

© Earl Rickard

Fear and apprehension gripped the officials at Lake Placid, New York, on the afternoon of February 4, 1932. Even New York's governor, although grinning broadly, probably had a few reservations. Why had bobsledder Paul Stevens done it. Why had he asked the governor's wife to try out the bobsled run. He must have known she would take up the challenge. He certainly knew that the previous week, during a trial run, the German bobsled team jumped the slide at Shady Corner going 65 m.p.h.; after landing in an 85-ft gully, most of the Germans went to the hospital with fractured skulls and broken wrists. Therefore, a great sigh of relief went up when Stevens' bobsled whooshed to a safe stop at the end of the course. There, stepping out of the bobsled, taking off her leather helmet, flashing her toothy grin, was the governor's wife -- Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1924, Chamonix, France hosted the first Winter Olympic events. Initially, these winter games were seen as a prelude to the more important summer games, but the Chamonix games were so successful that two years later the Olympic Committee bestowed the title "First Winter Olympics" on Chamonix '24 and pronounced the '28 games at St. Moritz, Switzerland, as the Second Winter Olympiad.

The first Winter Olympics on United States soil opened at Lake Placid, New York on February 4, 1932. President Hoover failed to attend because he was busy in Washington battling the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who announced his candidacy for Hoover's job a few weeks before, opened the ceremonies in his capacity as governor of New York State. FDR's wife, Eleanor, accompanied the governor, and it was during the opening day luncheon when Paul Stevens, one of the four bobsledding Stevens brothers, issued the invitation that could have marred the ceremonies if all had not gone well.

Thanks to the Olympics, Lake Placid, a new and little-known resort nestled in the Adirondack Mountains, 320 miles from New York City, became world-famous. Helping to spread that fame was the new technology of radio. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC), created in 1926, and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), created in 1928, both set up lines to transmit accounts of the Third Winter Olympics to the nation. NBC also broadcast eight of the events overseas through their shortwave station, WGY, in Schenectady, New York. Veteran sports announcer Clem McCarthy along with Ben Grauer, George Hicks, Edward Thorgersen, and Jack Filman described the first Olympics heard on radios down the street and around the world.

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