Customer Reviews

Snowball's Chance: The Story of the 1960 Olympic Winter Games Squaw Valley & Lake Tahoe

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Many skeptics including IOC President Avery Brundage thought the small family ski area in California could not host a successful Olympic Winter Games. The skeptics were wrong, and this book tells the story of how the Organizing Committee with the cooperation of local governments, the US military, and Olympic supporters around the world caused Avery Brundage to write at the conclusion of the Games, "The Olympic Winter Games were a major success in every respect."

Technological innovations at these Games brought competition into a new phase, and enabled the athletes to perform and be judged at the highest level.

Descriptions of each event during the games brings to life the drama of the competitions, and followup stories of a number of prominent athletes helps humanize these competitors.

If you have ever considered doing something impossible and have been constantly surrounded by naysayers, then read this book! Antonucci provides an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley and provides details not found in most other published sources. This is a story about bring a vision to fruition and worth reading whether you ski or not. For skiers, this book is a must read. Antonucci transports readers back to the early days of skiing, before giant corporate interests took over motivated by the bottom line. The 1960 Games represent an age of innocence in the winter sports world. An enjoyable and informative read!

I expected a more detalied account of waht happened at the Winter Olympics at Squaw Vally. I thought there would be a more comprehensive listing of finishes in Figure Skating for example. Laurence Owen finished 6th int he competition and this wasn't even mentioned. Nor that the U.S. had three out of the top 6 Lady figure skaters in the world. No mention of this. I guess I expected more from an accomplished writer like David Antonucci. It almost seemed to me like he threw this together in a hurry(maybe he did!). Maybe I was expecting a more personal, intimate account of the competitors and some interesting stories concerning what went on in Squaw Valley. I got more from reading Life Magazine and Sports Illustrated from that period than I did from David's book.

This is a nostalgic but rather rudimentary account of one of the `forgotten Games of Olympic history'--the 1960 Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California. Of the various modern era Olympics staged in North America, Squaw Valley 1960 has long since been overshadowed by Los Angeles 1984, Atlanta 1996, Salt Lake 2002 and recently, Vancouver 2010. Some fifty years later, author David Antonucci brings this little known chapter to life as a legitimate piece of sports and California history.

We view and enjoy the Olympics today as behemoth spectacles. As the title indicates, it's primarily a study of the American spirit...of how one man's (developer Alexander Cushing) dream of hosting a Winter Olympics in order to boost his almost non-existent ski resort, overcame the overwhelming odds of such a quest. Hosting the Olympics--and the Winter more so than the Summer--are considered the traditional bailiwick of the Europeans. However, in 1954-1955, Cushing dared to challenge this tradition by offering to host the Games half a world away. And that he succeeded so winningly is the crux of the book.

"Snowball's Chance" takes the reader back to what were the first televised `live' (Winter) Games shown in the United States--thus also making it one of the last `you-had-to-be-there' Olympic Games. One learns how the Organizing Committee was able to dispense with building an (unnecessary and expensive) luge and bobsled track but forgot to inform the Greek Olympic Committee that it wanted a lighting of the flame at Olympia. And one discovers that Squaw Valley '60 was also the first Olympics to employ a professional showman, Walt Disney, to spice up the whole look and feel of the Games with a Hollywood touch.

Although held in a quaint California Sierra valley at the end of the Eisenhower era, the Winter Games were apparently on the verge of becoming a gargantuan undertaking even then. Visually, it's a very threadbare tome but the detailed accounts more than make up for that. If you are truly into Olympic history, I would recommend this book as a worthy addition to your library.