1988 Calgary Winter Olympics

Also called: XV Olympic Winter Games, 1988 Winter Olympics

Canada’s first Winter Olympics, at Calgary, Alberta — the first to last sixteen days and the first with indoor speed skating.

Fifty-seven nations took part from 13 to 28 February. For the first time the Games ran for sixteen days, spanning three weekends, and speed skating moved indoors to a covered 400 m track, the Olympic Oval. Finland’s Matti Nykänen won all three ski-jumping events.

The Jamaican bobsleigh team, from a country that had hardly seen snow, and the British ski jumper Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, popular despite finishing last, caught the public imagination. Short-track speed skating, curling and freestyle skiing were held as demonstration sports. As at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games, Canada failed to win a gold medal on home soil.