Sarajevo 1984: Identity and pride untouched by conflict
The Olympic Winter Games Sarajevo 1984 helped the city to evolve and become a lasting source of pride for its residents. Known for its sometimes troubled past, particularly as the place where the events that led to the First World War were triggered, Sarajevo saw the Olympic Winter Games as an opportunity to project a positive image to the world. The Games also led to a growth in winter sports participation in the region during the 1980s, as locals made use of the venues that had been refurbished or built to stage them.
The Bosnian War of 1992-1995 saw those venues come under deliberate attack. Symbols of Sarajevo’s Olympic identity, they were repeatedly targeted during a siege of the city that lasted nearly four years. Their subsequent reconstruction reflected Sarajevo’s pride in its Olympic heritage and its status as the only Olympic host city in this part of Europe. It continues to nurture that pride to this day.
A CITY TRANSFORMED
The Olympic Winter Games provided a major stimulus for the city, both in terms of its development and infrastructure. New ring roads were built to keep traffic out of the heavily polluted city, which switched from coal and kerosene to gas heating in an effort to improve air quality.
New hotels were constructed to cope with the increase in the number of tourists and apartments built in their thousands for Sarajevans in new residential areas such as Mojmilo, the site of the Olympic Village. Forming part of the city’s social housing scheme, the Village’s 639 apartments were made available after the Games to families in need of permanent accommodation. Though extensively damaged during the Bosnian War, the Olympic Village was renovated afterwards and is fully occupied today.
A LASTING SOURCE OF PRIDE
Sarajevo’s enduring pride in staging the Olympic Winter Games is reflected by the restoration of its war-damaged Olympic buildings and attractions such as the Olympic Museum, which returned to its original site in October 2020. The International Olympic Committee, the City of Barcelona and the organising committees of the Olympic Winter Games Lillehammer 1994 and Turin 2006 all gave financial and technical support during the process of rebuilding the Zetra Complex. That pride also manifests itself in surveys of local residents, in the continuing visibility of the 1984 Games’ mascot and emblem on the city streets, and in the well-attended celebrations held to mark successive anniversaries of the event.
When, in 2014, British ice dance pair Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean returned to the city where they had won Olympic gold 30 years earlier, 5,000 Sarajevans turned up to watch them reprise their routine, performed to the sound of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. Meanwhile, visitors to the city can take Olympic-themed tours of the Sarajevo 1984 venues, where information panels and signs proudly proclaiming their Olympic status have recently been installed.
VENUES IN USE, BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR
Eight competition venues were used for the Olympic Winter Games Sarajevo 1984. Six of them are still in use today, benefitting the local community, visitors and recreational and high-performance athletes alike. One of the competition venues was an existing site. The rest were built for the Games.
The Olympic venues were crucial to the post-Games winter sports boom in the region, as participation increased five times between 1984 and 1988, with children accounting for most of this rise. Local schools, sports clubs and associations made regular use of Igman Malo Polje’s ski jumps, the Trebevic sliding centre, the slopes of Bjelasnica and Jahorina, the Zetra Olympic Complex and the other venues, ensuring that they remained vibrant places through to the outbreak of the war.
During the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995, these venues suffered damage to varying degrees. Most have been restored to their original use and modernised since then, partly thanks to international support. Visitors and local residents continue to use them for a wide range of winter and summer sports.The staging of the 2019 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in Sarajevo and East Sarajevo was an important milestone in the city’s reclaiming of its Olympic heritage, with six of the venues used in 1984 staging events after undergoing improvements.