The effort to add winter sports to the Olympic program took a while to catch on after the Games were revived in 1896. In 1912, the Swedes were hosting the Summer Games and had no interest in adding a winter program that would compete with their own Nordic Games. In 1916, the host Germans were ready to stage a parallel winter program before World War I cancelled the Games entirely. Along the way, figure skating and ice hockey found their way into the Summer Olympics, which just seems weird.

It finally all came together 91 years ago, when the first Winter Olympic Games were held in the French ski resort village of Chamonix on January 25, 1924. Paris was hosting the Summer Games that year, and the French were happy to get a double dip of Olympic energy in 1924. It was officially called the International Winter Sports Week, and there were 9 events, including speed skating, figure skating, curling, ice hockey, and four skiing events. The final medal table had a heavy Scandinavian tilt, with Norway’s 17 medals and Finland’s 11 easily outstripping the other eight competing countries. (New Yorker Charles Jewtraw brought home the lone U.S. gold, in speed skating.)

The event was such a success that the Olympic committee made it a permanent fixture, and officially changed the name to the Winter Olympic Games, with the Chamonix games retroactively becoming the first installment. The Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same year until 1992, when the current schedule of alternating them in even-numbered years was implemented.

Like the Summer Games, the Winter Games have seen some events come and go (and then come again, in the case of curling). The most badass-sounding event to get the axe was something called the military patrol, which combined cross-country skiing with mountaineering and rifle shooting. (The modern biathlon is similar, but it doesn’t have mountain climbing...or nearly as cool of a name.) Norway has maintained its spot atop the all-time medal table with 329, outstripping the United States’ second-place showing at 281. (Our first-place all-time haul of 2,681 medals from combined Summer and Winter Games makes that a little easier to swallow.)

One crucial ingredient for the Winter Olympics is snow, and this hasn't always been reliable. In 1964, the Austrian army had to transport snow and ice to Innsbruck, a resort town that had no snowfall in time for the Games. The host Canadians and Russians resorted to the same thing in 2010 and 2014 thanks to unseasonably warm temperatures in Vancouver and Sochi, leading to speculation that climate change could create big problems for the Winter Games in coming years. I certainly hope not; I'm really starting to get into this curling business.

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