1932 Olympics

The 1932 Winter Olympics is a multi-sport winter event held in Lake Placid, New York, United States, officially known as the III Olympic Winter Games. The games opened on February 4th, and closed on February 15th. It was the first of four winter Olympics in the United States; Lake Placid hosted again in 1980. Godfrey Dewey, founder of the Lake Placid Club and son of Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, brought the games in part of Lake Placid.[1] California also had a plan for the Winter Games of 1932. William May Garland, president of the California X Olympiad Association, ordered the games in Wrightwood and Big Pines, California for play. For the event, the world's highest ski jump at the time was constructed in Big Pines, but in the end the games were awarded to Lake Placid. Coca-Cola would later become an approved soft beverage manufacturer for this Winter Olympics. The Olympics opened with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then the governor of New York. Nine months later he was to be voted US President. Billy Fiske, carried the flag for the United States in the opening ceremonies. A member of Aspen ski park in Colorado, he was killed in 1940 serving in the Battle of Britain. Sonja Henie won the second of three consecutive Olympic gold medals in figure skating. She'd previously won gold in 1928 and 1936. Irving Jaffee won the gold medals in speedskating at 5,000 m and 10,000 m, beating previous champion and world record holder Ivar Ballangrud in the 10,000 m by 4.5 m. In both the summer and winter games, Eddie Eagan became the first Olympian to earn gold medals in different sports. In 1920 he won gold in wrestling at the summer games in Antwerp, and gold in bobsleigh at Lake Placid. The bobsleigh race was held two days after the close of the games festivities, due to the unseasonably warm weather in the region the week before. In the medal count the USA earned a total of 12 medals. That was the last time the US finished to top medal count at the Winter Olympics. Seventeen counties participated. Medals were won at 14 events in 4 contested disciplines. At those Games, competitors representing 17 countries participated, down representing 25 countries at similar Games in 1928. Argentina, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Switzerland, Brazil, The Netherlands and Yugoslavia did not send competitors to Lake Placid. At the time, Lake Placid was a town with a population of under 4,000. In the midst of a crisis, the president of the Organizing Committee, Mr Godfrey Dewey, gave a plot of land belonging to his family for the building of the bobsleigh track in the face of significant obstacles to collecting funds. Norway's Sonja Henie and Andrée and French pair Pierre Brunet excel in defending their skating titles in figure. American Billy Fiske won a second gold medal in the four- bobsleigh. Sweden's Gillis Grafström, however, was stopped attempting to earn his fourth gold medal, coming second behind Austrian Karl Schäfer. For the first time and only time in Olympic history the American group racing concept has been used in the speed skating competition. Similar to the European heats programme, where two teams are playing against each other and the clock, which required mass starting and competitors playing against each other. American Eddie Eagan accomplished a remarkable feat by winning gold medals both in summer and in winter. He'd won the light-heavyweight boxing division at the 1920 Antwerp Olympic Summer Games. Twelve years later he had won in Lake Placid's four-man bobsleigh.