The Most Memorable Moments of the Last Winter Olympics in Cortina

The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will mark the third time that Italy has hosted the event and the first time that Milan is hosting an Olympics.

The last time Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted the Winter Olympics was in 1956 (Jan. 26-Feb. 5). The Games featured 821 athletes, and 24 events like bobsleigh, speed skating, and alpine skiing.

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Here’s what to know about that event.

Milestones

The most memorable moments of the 1956 Winter Olympics arguably came from the female competitors. 

Less than two weeks before competition, Tenley Emma Albright, a polio survivor, suffered a serious injury when her left skate cut her right ankle joint to the bone. Yet she was determined to compete, and her physician father flew over with her to tend to her injury. “I’ll skate even if the leg is broken,” she told TIME back then. Albright went on to become the first-ever American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in figure skating. “Moving as if her leg had never been hurt, Tenley whirled through her complicated routine,” TIME reported. NBC reports that the 1956 Winter Olympics were the last time that figure skating events were held outdoors.

Switzerland’s Madeleine Berthod became the world champion in downhill skiing on her 25th birthday when she clinched an Olympic gold medal. Known as the greatest female Swiss skier of her generation, her margin of victory (4.7 seconds) was four times larger than any other woman’s in the event’s history, according to the official website for the Olympics. After the Games, she got married, had three children, and became a veterinarian.

In terms of the men, Soviet speedskater Yevgeny Romanovich Grishin, a goldsmith, won two gold medals in 1956, in 1500m and 500m, where he set a new record. The 25-year-old earned the nickname “Greyhound of the Ice.” Hayes Alan Jenkins earned gold in figure skating and later married the silver medalist at the Games, Carol Heiss.

Another standout male athlete was Anton “Toni” Sailer, known as “The blitz from Kitz” and the greatest Alpine skier in Olympic history back then. He won all three alpine events at the 1956 Winter Olympics at just 21 years old. Off the slopes, he was a film actor, plunging down the slopes of Piz Gloria as a stunt double for George Lazenby’s James Bond in 007-On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. 

Staging the 1956 Cortina Winter Olympics

The 1956 Winter Olympics was supposed to take place in 1944, but it got canceled because of World War II. And it was almost in danger of being cancelled again because it was unseasonably warm in the walk-up to the big event.

As TIME reported back then: “Days of bright sunshine softened the ski runs. Slush filled Cortina’s streets. Flags of competing nations hung limp in the warm air. As the bobsled run slowly spoiled in the heat, national arguments developed over who should get a chance to practice. Italian Alpine troops were standing by to cart snow from colder slopes.”

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union made its debut at the Winter Olympics and dominated the Games, racking up the most medals at 16 and even beating the Canadians in hockey.

It was the first Winter Olympics to be broadcast live in black-and-white across eight countries. Thus, the 1956 Games established Cortina’s reputation as a first-rate winter sports destination.