Figure skating at the 1968 Winter Olympics

Lore & Background

The 1968 Winter Olympics figure skating competition took place in Grenoble, France, at Le Stade Olympique de Glace. The event included men's, ladies', and pairs disciplines, along with a demonstration event officially known as 'ice dancing,' which was won by the British team of Diane Towler and Bernard Ford. This demonstration event would later become a medal event eight years later at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics.

Reader's Guide

The 1968 Winter Olympics figure skating competition is significant for several reasons. Peggy Fleming's victory marked the first gold medal won by an American figure skater after the tragic death of the entire US figure skating team in an air crash in 1961. Her win heralded an American figure skating renaissance. Additionally, the demonstration event 'rhythmic skating' (later known as ice dance) was held, with Towler and Ford of Great Britain winning. This event paved the way for ice dance to become a full medal sport in 1976. The competition also featured a notable panel of judges and referees from various countries, reflecting the international nature of the sport.

Did You Know?

• Ice dancing was a demonstration event at the 1968 Olympics and was won by Diane Towler and Bernard Ford of Great Britain.
• Peggy Fleming won the first-place votes of all nine judges in the ladies' event.
• Peggy Fleming's victory was the first gold medal won by an American after the death of an entire US figure skating team in an air crash in 1961.

A Century on the Olympic Ice

Figure skating's presence at the Winter Games stretches back to 1908, giving it one of the longest continuous traditions in Olympic sport. Over the course of 26 different Olympic Games, athletes representing 30 National Olympic Committees have collectively earned 301 medals—101 gold, 100 silver, and 100 bronze. The discipline once included six distinct events, though men's special figures appeared only in that inaugural 1908 appearance before being permanently retired. In its modern form, the sport awards medals in five disciplines: men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, ice dance, and the team event. The breadth of nations contributing to the medal tally, from Scandinavian countries to East Asian and North American programs, underscores how deeply the sport has been woven into the Olympic fabric for more than a century.

Legends of the Podium

A small group of skaters have distinguished themselves through extraordinary multi-Games medal hauls. Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir remain the only figure skaters to collect five Olympic medals, amassing three golds and two silvers. Just behind them, Sweden's Gillis Grafström, Russia's Evgeni Plushenko, and Japanese skaters Yuma Kagiyama and Kaori Sakamoto each secured four medals across their careers. The remarkable feat of claiming three consecutive Olympic titles in a single discipline has been achieved by only three athletes in the sport's history: Grafström in men's singles, Norway's Sonja Henie in women's singles, and Soviet pair skater Irina Rodnina. In ice dance, the benchmark for consecutive titles stands at two, a mark reached by Oksana Grishuk alongside Evgeny Platov and by Guillaume Cizeron, who uniquely accomplished it with two different partners.

Medals in Motion: Controversy and Re-allocation

Olympic figure skating has repeatedly faced disputes over who rightfully claims a medal. At the 1964 Games, German pair skaters Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler were stripped of their silver after it was revealed they had signed a professional contract before competing. The medals were redistributed to the Canadian and American pairs, but a 1987 appeal restored the Germans' silver. By November 2014, the IOC had clarified that both the German and Canadian teams shared the silver, with the Americans holding bronze. A far more dramatic scandal erupted at the 2002 Games, where allegations of vote-swapping involving a French judge led to the discarding of her scores. Canadian pair Jamie Salé and David Pelletier were upgraded to gold, while the originally leading Russian pair retained their medals. The French judge and her federation president each received three-year suspensions for their roles in the affair.

The Team Event and the Valieva Storm

The team event, first contested at the 2014 Games, is the newest addition to Olympic figure skating, blending all four disciplines into a single competition where the nation earning the most placement points claims gold. The 2022 edition became engulfed in a doping controversy surrounding Russian skater Kamila Valieva, whose December 2021 sample tested positive for trimetazidine. The Russian Anti-Doping Agency cleared her in February 2022, a decision appealed by the IOC, WADA, and the ISU. The Court of Arbitration for Sport initially permitted her to compete in the individual event, partly citing her minor status. In January 2024, CAS disqualified Valieva for four years, and the ISU subtracted her points from Russia's team score. The United States and Japan were elevated to gold and silver, while Russia dropped to bronze. The American and Japanese teams finally received their medals at a ceremony in Paris during the 2024 Summer Olympics.