- published: 15 Apr 2015
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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.
Ann Scott (b. 3 November 1965, Paris, France) is a French novelist.
She is regarded as a social realist for her novels, which paint detailed portraits of contemporary youth haunted by teenage boredom, drugs, materialism, status obsession and social trangression. Her second novel Superstars has given her a cult status in France.
She was born and raised in Paris, France. Her mother is a news photographer of Russian descent, and her father, a French businessman and art collector.
At age 16, she moved alone to London, England where she became a musician, playing drums with local punk bands. At 18, she turned to fashion modelling for three years and was one of the first tattooed fashion model to break through in prêt-à-porter and couture in the eighties.
She is now a fiction writer and the author of six novels including Superstars which has become a cult novel translated in several countries. She also publishes short stories in magazines and co-wrote Paradize for French band Indochine for their album of the same title.