The 1960 Winter Olympics, officially known as the VIII Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event held between 18 and 28 February 1960 in Squaw Valley, California, United States. In 1955 at the 50th IOC meeting, the organizing committee made the surprise choice to award Squaw Valley as hosts for the 1960 Winter Games. Squaw Valley was mostly undeveloped, so from 1956 to 1960 all of the venues and infrastructure had to be built or improved at a cost of $80,000,000. The Games featured the first athlete's village and was designed to be intimate, allowing spectators and athletes the ability to walk to nearly all the venues. The opening and closing ceremonies were produced by Walt Disney and televised by CBS. The 1960 Games were the first to have television broadcast rights sold to the highest bidder. It was the first time in 28 years that an Olympic Games had been held in North America.

Thirty nations and 665 athletes competed in four sports and 27 events. Women's speed skating and biathlon made their Olympic debuts. The organizers decided the bobsled events did not warrant the cost to build a venue, so for the first and only time bobsled was not on the Winter Olympic program. The Soviet Union dominated the medal count winning 21 medals, 7 of which were gold. Soviet speed skaters Yevgeny Grishin and Lidiya Skoblikova were the only multiple gold medalists. Swedish lumberjack Sixten Jernberg added a gold and silver to the 4 medals he won at the 1956 Winter Games. He would win three more in 1964 to finish his Olympic career with 9 medals, becoming the most decorated Winter Olympian to date.

The Winter Olympic Games is a sporting event, which occurs every four years. The first celebration of the Winter Olympics was held in Chamonix, France, in 1924. The original sports were alpine and cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping and speed skating. The Games were held every four years from 1924 until 1936 when they were interrupted by World War II. The Olympics resumed in 1948 and were celebrated every four years. The Winter and Summer Olympic Games were held in the same years until 1992, when the governing body for the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), decided to place the Summer and Winter Games on separate four-year cycles in alternating even-numbered years.

The Winter Games have evolved since their inception. Sports have been added and some of them, such as luge, short track speed skating and freestyle skiing, have earned a permanent spot on the Olympic programme. Others, such as speed skiing, bandy and skijoring, were demonstration sports but never incorporated as Olympic sports. The rise of television as a global medium for communication enhanced the profile of the Games. It created an income stream, via the sale of broadcast rights and advertising, which has become lucrative for the IOC. This allowed outside interests, such as television companies and corporate sponsors, to exert influence. The IOC has had to address several criticisms, internal scandals, the use of performance enhancing drugs by Winter Olympians, as well as a political boycott of the Winter Olympics. Nations have used the Winter Games to showcase the claimed superiority of their political systems.

Carol Elizabeth Heiss Jenkins (born January 20, 1940 in New York City) is an American figure skater. She is the 1960 Olympic Champion in Ladies Singles, 1956 Olympic silver medalist and five-time World Champion (1956–1960).

Heiss grew up in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, New York, where she started skating at the age of 6. She was coached by Pierre Brunet. Heiss first came to national prominence in 1951, when she was U.S. Novice Ladies' Champion at age 11. She won the U.S. Junior Ladies title in 1952, and then moved up to the senior level in 1953. From 1953 to 1956, she finished second to Tenley Albright at the national championships.

Heiss's 1956 performance qualified her for the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. She won the silver medal, while Albright took the gold. However, at the following World Figure Skating Championships at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, Heiss defeated Albright for the title; it was the first of her five consecutive world titles. During that time, she attended and graduated from New York University.

Barbara Aileen Wagner (born May 5, 1938 in Toronto, Ontario) is a former Canadian pair skater who competed with Robert Paul. The couple captured five Canadian titles and four world titles, and capped their career by winning the gold medal at the 1960 Winter Olympics.

After her competitive career, she married fellow skater James Grogan (but they later divorced). With Paul, she toured with Ice Capades.

Currently Barbara resides in Alpharetta, Georgia, where she coaches figure skating at the Alpharetta Family Skate Center, the Cooler, and is a member of the Atlanta Figure Skating Club.^{[citation needed]}

(with Paul)

Barbara Ann Scott King, (born May 9, 1928 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) is a four-time Canadian figure skating Champion (1944–46, 48). She is the 1948 Olympic Champion and two-time World Champion (1947–1948) in ladies singles. Known as "Canada's Sweetheart", she is the only Canadian to win the ladies singles figure skating gold medal, the first North American to win three major titles in one year and the only Canadian to win the European Championship (1947–1948). During her forties she was rated among the top equestrians in North America. She has received many honours and accolades, including being made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1991 and a member of the Order of Ontario in 2008.

Barbara Ann Scott is the youngest of three children born to Canadian Army Colonel Clyde Rutherford Scott and Mary Purves of Sandy Hill in Ottawa. She began skating at the age of seven with the Minto Skating Club. At the age of ten she became the youngest ever to pass the "gold figures test" and at eleven years old won her first national junior title. Two years later, in 1942, she became the first female to ever land a double lutz in competition, and by the age of fifteen was Canada's "senior champion". From 1944 to 1946, she held the Canadian Figure Skating championship. In 1947 Scott became the first North American to win both the European and World Figure Skating championships, and remains the only Canadian to win the European title. This led to her being voted Canadian Newsmaker of the Year in 1947. On her return to Ottawa during a parade she was given a yellow Buick convertible (license plate: 47-U-1); however it had to be returned for her to retain amateur status, so as to be able to compete in the 1948 Winter Olympics.