Calgary, Irving Jaffee and a time when the Winter Olympics was far from cold | Simon Burnton

A look back at the history of past Games in warmer climates, plus the tale of a speed skater who had the odds against him

In 1988, shortly before the Winter Olympics got under way and amid rising concerns about the event suffering from good – which for the purposes of the Games would be bad – weather, 500 residents of Calgary with the surnames White, Winter or Snow gathered to perform a snow dance. The event concluded with them chanting “White winter snow, white winter snow, let it go!” before releasing helium balloons with their names on.

It did not help: warm winds soon arrived to melt much of what snow there was, temperatures peaked at 18.1°C and 33 events had to be rescheduled. “We simply must make better calculations when awarding future Winter Games,” grumbled Walter Troeger of the International Olympic Committee, an organisation that has since graduated from awarding winter events to places that might not have enough snow to giving them to places that will definitely not have any.