Sapporo Olympic Museum

Hokkaido | Sapporo City

2021 Tokyo Olympics & Paralympics

Let us take you to Sapporo and Lausanne to discover the territorial roots of the Olympic Movement – and its museums!

An unforgettable winter in Hokkaido

To many inhabitants of Sapporo, the 1972 Winter Olympics were an event of historic proportions. Aside from being the first winter edition held in Asia, the prestigious Games were also finally taking place in their city, 32 years after having been prematurely cancelled due to war. Hailed as a success by the international community, the 11-days competition saw the participation of 90 Japanese athletes, as well as the first-ever Winter Olympic gold medal for Japan. Almost half a century later, visitors can still relieve some of the excitement of the Games at the Sapporo Olympic Museum, located at the foot of the Okurayama Ski Jump Stadium. Thanks to a massive collection of valuable materials related to the 1972 Games, to the Nordic Ski Championships, and to the Universidad Winter Games, the museum offers an interactive immersion into the world of winter sports.

But what about all the other Olympic Games held throughout history? Sports enthusiasts wishing to dig further can discover the past, present, and future of the world’s most iconic sporting competition in a museum located in Lausanne (Switzerland), a middle-sized city that has hosted the Olympic Movement for the past hundred years.

Lausanne, Olympic Capital

In 1915, Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) chose Lausanne as the base for the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). «The Olympic spirit will find the pledge of freedom that it needs to progress in the independent and proud atmosphere that one breathes in Lausanne. » declared the reviver of the modern Olympic Games, who lived in the Swiss city for a large part of his life. The capital of the canton of Vaud being a lively university and cosmopolitan town where sports and culture are given a high profile, Coubertin’s choice certainly aligned with the values of the Games.

It was under the impetus of IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch that Lausanne was later promoted to Olympic Capital, on 23 June 1994, to mark the centenary of the IOC. The city has since spent years developing a proper policy worthy of this status, enabling the city to become the administrative capital of sport over the course of time. It has notably fostered the continual expansion of the network of international sport federations, which are currently hosted in the Maison du Sport International.

From Leonidas of Rhodes to “Yuzu”

The Olympic Museum, which was opened in 1993 in Ouchy, a district of Lausanne, reflects the spirit of the sports games that bring nations together. Renovated in 2013 and set in the most breathtaking of locations on Lake Geneva, the building is home to interactive exhibitions featuring more than 1,500 documents, films and collections of precious objects dating from Greek antiquity up until modern times. It is also the largest information center on the subject of the Olympic Games in the world.

In June 2018, two-time figure skating Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu even donated a pair of gloves he wore during the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games to the Museum. And one can certainly expect that new sports relics belonging to triumphing Swiss and Japanese athletes will make their way to the Olympic Museum in the wake of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games or the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, which will take place… in Lausanne!