The 1964 Winter Olympics, officially known as the IX Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Innsbruck, Austria, from January 29 to February 9, 1964. The games included 1091 athletes from 36 nations, and the Olympic Torch was carried by Joseph Rieder, a former alpine skier who had participated in the 1956 Winter Olympics.

The games were affected by the deaths of Australian alpine skier Ross Milne and British luge slider Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, during training, and by the deaths, three years earlier, of the entire US figure skating team and family members (see Prior tragedies below).

Innsbruck had two other candidate cities to go against for the 1964 Winter Olympics. Here are the resulting vote count that occurred at the 55th IOC Session in Munich, West Germany, on May 26, 1959, compliments of the International Olympic Committee Vote History web page.

36 nations sent athletes to compete in Innsbruck. India, Mongolia, and North Korea participated in the Winter Games for the first time. Athletes from West Germany (FRG) and East Germany (GDR) competed together as the United Team of Germany from 1956 to 1964.

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.

Oleg Alekseyevich Protopopov (Russian: Оле́г Алексе́евич Протопо́пов) (b. 16 July 1932, in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, Russia) is a Russian pair skater who represented the Soviet Union. With his partner Ludmila Belousova, he is a two-time Olympic champion (1964, 1968) and four-time World champion (1965–1968).

Protopopov started skating relatively late, at age 15. He met Belousova in 1954 and they began skating together. They trained at VSS Lokomotiv and competed internationally for the USSR.

Belousova and Protopopov debuted at the World Championships in 1958, finishing 13th. Two years later they competed at their first Olympics, placing 9th. In 1962, they made the World Championship podium for the first time, earning the silver medal. They were the first pair from the Soviet Union or Russia to win a World medal since the discipline's introduction at the 1908 World Championships (which had only three pairs competing). They also won silver at the European Championships, becoming the second Soviet pair to medal after Nina Zhuk / Stanislav Zhuk (who won silver from 1958 to 1960).

Miwa Fukuhara (福原 美和, Fukuhara Miwa^?, born December 13, 1944) is a Japanese figure skater who is now a coach. She was born in Tokyo.

She is a six-time Japanese national champion. She finished 21st in the 1960 Winter Olympic Games, and 5th in the 1964 Winter Olympic Games. She is a member of the founding family of Shiseido.