Pierre de Coubertin was an interested spectator at the skijoring competitions organised as part of the Nordic Games he attended in the early years of the 20th century. Suitably impressed by what he saw, in 1901 he wrote an article for the Revue Olympique in which he advocated the inclusion of several winter sports on the Games programme and expressed a particular interest in skijoring, which eventually made its Olympic debut at St Moritz 1928, albeit as a demonstration sport.

The USA’s inability to raise a men’s ice hockey team for St Moritz 1928 meant they missed the competition for the first and only time in their history. Meanwhile, northern neighbours Canada were represented by graduates from the University of Toronto, who earned their ticket to the Games by winning the Allan Cup, the Canadian amateur championship.

The first St Moritz Games proved to be a huge success and, given the problems caused by the fluctuating weather, were remarkably well organised.

A cross-country and Nordic combined specialist, Norway’s Johan Grøttumsbråten won three medals at Chamonix 1924: silver in the 18km and bronzes in the 50km and Nordic combined, an event in which he also won gold at the 1926 world championships in Lahti (FIN).

Hailing from a well-to-do family in Connecticut, Jennison Heaton and his brothers Jack and Trowbridge spent their childhood years in Europe and frequently holidayed in the Alps. They discovered the joys of winter sports on the legendary Cresta Run in St Moritz, the track on which British tourists invented the sport of bobsleigh in the 1870s.

A double Olympic champion who helped found Aspen ski resort in Colorado and was killed in action during the Battle of Britain in August 1940, Billy Fiske was a real-life hero.

Staged on the resort’s K90 Olympiaschanze hill (the biggest in the world at the time) and watched by a crowd of more than 8,000 enthusiastic spectators, the ski jumping competition at St Moritz 1928 was made notable by the fact that the 38-strong field featured a Japanese jumper by the name of Motohiko Ban, the first athlete from his country and from Asia to compete in the Olympic Winter Games.

Ivar Ballangrud was only 19 when he first got himself noticed on the international speed skating scene, though he made his arrival a little too late to earn a place at the inaugural Olympic Winter Games in Chamonix in 1924. One month later, however, the young Norwegian outskated newly crowned Olympic 10,000m champion Julius Skutnabb of Finland over the same distance at the World Allround Speed Skating Championships in Helsinki. Two years later Ballangrud won the first of his four titles and 11 medals in all at the world championships held on home ice in Trondheim.

Norwegian speed skater Bernt Evensen had a record to set straight when he lined up in the 500m at St Moritz 1928. Four years earlier in Chamonix, Norway’s finest had to content themselves with the minor medals after seeing the USA’s Charles Jewtraw win gold in 500m, Finland’s Clas Thunberg do likewise in the 1,500m, 5,000m and all-round events and fellow Finn Julius Skutnabb take the 10,000m title.

Clas Thunberg finished on every speed skating podium at Chamonix 1924. With three golds, a silver and a bronze, he collected more medals than any other athlete at the inaugural Olympic Winter Games, and followed up that feat by winning the world allround titles in Oslo in 1925 and in Davos in 1928.