1998 winter olympics

bgcolor="#efefef" colspan="2" style="margin-left:5px;" align="center"\| XVIII Olympic Winter Games
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Nations participating	72
Athletes participating	2176 (1389 men, 787 women)
Events	72 in 7 sports
Opening ceremony	February 7, 1998
Closing ceremony	February 22, 1998
Officially opened by	HIM Emperor Akihito
Athlete's Oath	Kenji Ogiwara
Official's Oath	Junko Hiramatsu
Olympic Torch	Midori Ito

The XVIII Olympic Winter Games were held in 1998 in Nagano, Japan. Other candidate cities were Aosta, Italy; Jaca, Spain; stersund, Sweden; and Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

Highlights

XC skier Bjrn Dhlie of Norway won three gold medals in Nordic skiing to become the first winter Olympian to earn eight career gold medals and twelve total medals.
Snowboarding and curling debuted as official sports and women's ice hockey was introduced to the Olympic program.
NHL players were able to compete in men's ice hockey due to a three week suspension of the competition.
Tara Lipinski, 15, won the women's figure skating title to become the youngest champion in an individual event in the history of the Winter Olympics.
Alpine skier Hermann Maier (Austria) survived a fall in the downhill and went on to gold in the super-g and giant slalom.
Speed skaters Gianni Romme and Marianne Timmer won two gold medals each for the Netherlands; 5 out of 10 titles in speed skating went to the Netherlands.
Snowboarder Ross Rebagliati won the gold medal, after initially being disqualified for marijuana usage.
Azerbaijan, Kenya, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Uruguay and Venezuela made their first appearance at these Olympic Winter Games.

See the medal winners, ordered by sport:

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Top medal-collecting nations:
(for the full table, see 1998 Winter Olympics medal count)

colspan=5 style="border-right:0px;";\| 1998 Winter Olympics medal count	style="border-left:0px"; \| 50px
b>Pos	Country	bgcolor="gold"\| Gold	bgcolor="silver"\| Silver	bgcolor="cc9966"\| Bronze	Total
1	Germany	12	9	8	29
2	Norway	10	10	5	25
3	Russian Federation	9	6	3	18
4	Canada	6	5	4	15
5	United States	6	3	4	13
6	Netherlands	5	4	2	11
7	Japan	5	1	4	10
8	Austria	3	5	9	17
9	Korea	3	1	2	6
10	2	6	2	10

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