The Sniktau Snafu: The 1976 Denver Winter olympic Games That Weren't By Jay Fell
"Colorado voters sent the 1976 Olympics in search of a new home Tuesday," wrote a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News a few days after the November elections in 1972. "Anti-Olympic forces viewed the vote as the beginning of a new era in which politicians will be more attuned to limiting population growth and rendering priorities for spending tax funds." And just days later, Denver officially ended its bid to host the 1976 Games, the only time in history that a city awarded an Olympiad has ever relinquished them. But that in effect was the decision of Colorado's voters in an election with powerful environmental concerns that shaped the state for decades to come. The official logo of the 1976 Denver Winter Olympics. Courtesy Denver Public Library.
The Quest
The idea of holding the Winter Olympics in Colorado had begun years before, when the postwar ski industry took hold as a major force in recreation, tourism, and the Colorado economy. Though downhill and crosscountry skiing stretched back to territorial days, it was the advent of new techniques and technology that created a huge boom in downhill skiing along the new I-70 corridor west of Denver. While the Loveland and Arapahoe Basin areas preceded World War II, as did the ski jumping center of Steamboat Springs, the postwar boom accelerated development, and downhill skiing became the prestige winter sport of the affluent new baby boomers. Keystone, Breckenridge, and Vail leapt into being as destination resorts. And the construction of I-70 22
Trail & Timberline
farther west of them made access to Aspen far easier than ever before and accentuated the advent of the so-called Aspen Renaissance launched by Elizabeth and Walter Paepcke just after World War II. This remarkable boom inevitably led to the quest to land the Winter Olympic Games. Serious efforts to that end began in Denver through the work of the Denver Organizing Committee in the mid-tolate 1960s. Their goal—the 1976 Winter Games. The proponents were well-connected, and beginning about 1967, they began to hold a series of essentially secret meetings to plan their strategy. The plan that evolved was to use existing facilities in Denver for the skating events, lands around Evergreen for the Nordic or cross-country events, and either Vail or a new resort west of Vail for the alpine competition. The University of Denver would host the skating events and the Olympic Village. But the organizers ran
afoul of Olympic rules. Since all the events had to be held within 45 miles of Denver, the committee selected Evergreen as the locale of the cross-country events; the Denver mountain parks near there for the sledding competitions; and Loveland Basin and Mount Sniktau for the alpine events. This plan was badly flawed. Even members of the committee would later acknowledge this. And compounding these problems was the committee’s approach to its work. It met mostly in secret, which contributed to bad public relations, an in-yourface attitude and contempt for the general public. But the committee, too, would run into forces beyond its control—the Denver/ anti-Denver split in state politics, the growing environmental movement, opposition to rampant growth, and Colorado’s penchant for fiscal austerity. Those issues were not apparent as the committee members presented their case, first for the United
