Winter Olympics: Sochi 2014 v. Lake Placid 1980

By Patricia Guthrie

Imagine an Olympics without cell phones or personal computers of any type:  No desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, smart phones, androids, apps, blogs or videos gone viral.  No digital, no links, no "likes," no nightly social media "report." Cameras needed film, telephones needed cords, and journalists tapped out stories on typewriters.
Ancient history, right? 

That's what I feel watching any Olympics that comes around these days, summer or winter. I can't help but compare the host cities, the facilities, the expense, the growing number of sports and events and number of participants to my time at what had to be the last of the simple Olympics — the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. I took a semester off from college at the University of Buffalo (N.Y.) and signed up as a volunteer with the International Olympic Organizing Committee, specifically to assist the media as I was considering journalism as a career. If you want to learn more about prehistoric pre-digital pre-computer pre-Internet Olympics, check out by other Olympic posts.
Lake Placid cost $363 million to stage; 
Sochi cost $51 billion. The number of events and number of nations more than doubled and the number of athletes nearly tripled.
Here's what else has changed over 34 years:

1980 LAKE PLACID WINTER OLYMPICS
Xlll Winter Olympiad

Host Country: United States of America

Population of Host city: 2,500

37 Nations

1,081 athletes 

10 Sports

Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Bobsleigh, Cross Country Skiing, Figure Skating, Ice Hockey, Luge, Nordic Combined, Ski Jumping, Speed Skating

38 events

6,700 volunteers

4,000 accredited media

Television rights: ABC paid $15.5 million

Security personnel: Not many

TOTAL COST: $363 million

2014 SOCHI WINTER OLYMPICS

XXII Winter Olympiad

Feb. 5, 2014 to Feb. 23, 2014 (17 days of competition)

Host Country: Russia

Population of Host City: 343,000

88 Nations

2,8871 athletes

15 sports

Alpine Skiing, Biathlon, Bobsleigh, Cross-Country skiing, Figure Skating, Ice Hockey, Luge, Nordic Combined, Ski Jumping, Speed Skating, Short Track, Curling, Freestyle Skiing, Snowboard, Skeleton

Debut competitions: 12, including women’s ski jump, team event figure skating, slope style skiing and snowboarding

98 events

25,000 volunteers

13,477 accredited media

Television rights: NBC paid $775 million

Security personnel: Between 37,000 to 100,000

TOTAL COST: $51 billion

Photo Credit: Rob Schumacher/(USA TODAY Sports Images)Competitors ski past Olympic rings at Sochi's Laura Cross-Country Ski and Biathlon Center during the men's team sprint classic semifinal.

Mascots

Lake Placid: Roni and Ronny Raccoon

Sochi: The Polar Bear, The Leopard, The Hare
Songs/Mottos

Ronny Raccoon

Lake Placid: Chuck Mangione’s “Give it All You Got”

Sochi: Hot. Cool. Yours.

Venue Firsts:

Lake Placid: First time artificial snow used at Winter Olympics

Sochi: First sub-tropical city selected for Winter Olympics

Venue Snafus:

Lake Placid: Buses failed to get spectators to events on time, small town barely holds all the athletes, spectators, officials and media

Sochi: Outdoor venue meltdown from above-freezing temperatures, roaming dogs, unfinished construction, bad water and confusing hotel toilets

One athlete, many medals

Lake Placid: U.S. speed skater Eric Heiden wins five gold medals in all five long track distances. His medals comprise 83 percent of USA’s total gold medal count. His feat has yet to be repeated.

Sochi: Russian speed skater Viktor Ahn wins three gold medals and one bronze in short-track distances, the same medals he won in 2006 as a South Korean skater. Ahn decided to move to Russia in 2011 in search of better coaching and support.

Lake Placid: Hanni Wenzel of Liechtenstein wins the women's giant slalom and slalom. Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark wins the men’s giant slalom and slalom.

Sochi: American-born Vic Wild wins two gold medals  in snowboarding slalom and giant slalom for Russia, where he moved for better support and training.

Lake Placid:  Nikolay Zimyatov of the USSR earns three gold medals in cross-country skiing. Anatoly Alyabyev of the USSR wins two gold medals and a bronze in biathlon.

Sochi: Darya Domracheva of Belarus wins three gold medals in biathlon events, winning more medals than her nation had won in total at the five previous Winter Olympics.

Ice Hockey High Drama

Miracle on Ice: U.S. men’s ice hockey team beats U.S.S.R. 4-3,  breaking the Soviet long hold on hockey gold. The Americans, comprised mostly of collegiate players, go on to beat Finland to win the gold medal. For play-by-play action.

Four Times the Charm: Canada’s women’s ice hockey team defeats the American team for the fourth time in Olympics gold medal competition. Losing 2-0 with less than four minutes to play, Canada tied the game and then scored another goal on a power play in overtime.

1980 LAKE PLACID MEDAL COUNT

East Germany: 23 total, 9 gold                                       

The Polar Bear, The Leopard, The Hare

USSR: 22 total, 10 gold

USA: 12 total, 6 gold

2014 SOCHI MEDAL COUNT

Russia: 33 total, 13 gold

USA: 28 total, 9 gold

Norway: 26 total, 11 gold