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1952 Oslo Winter Games
732 Athletes, 30 Countries, 22 Events

The 1952 Oslo Games was the first time that the Olympic flame was lit for the Winter Olympics. And just as the flame was burning, the U.S. Men's Ice Hockey team was crosschecking, icing, and highsticking their way into the penalty box. Three of the U.S. players, none from the Ivy League, of course, accounted for more total penalty minutes than the totals of eight other teams. Beyond those three hard hitters, the U.S. team had five Ivy Leaguers.

Jerry Kilmartin (Brown), Donald Francis Whiston (Brown, 1951), Richard J. Desmond (Dartmouth, 1949), Clifford Harrison (Dartmouth, 1951), and Arnold C. Oss, Jr. (Dartmouth, 1950) were all part of the silver medalwinning US team that finished with a record of 611. The tie came in the final game against gold medalwinning Canada; tying the Canadian team propelled the Americans from fourth place to second place. Out of this group, Desmond is enshrined in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.

Again, a group of Dartmouth skiers were at the Olympics: William L. Beck (Dartmouth, 1953), John H. Caldwell (Dartmouth, 1950), Chiharu 'Chick' Igaya (Dartmouth, 1957), David J. Lawrence (Dartmouth, 1957), and John C. Burton (Harvard, 1944) joined them. Beck was the only one of the group that placed well: fifth place in the downhill alpine skiing event with a time of 2:33.3, only 2.5 seconds off of the pace of the gold medalwinner. Many in the rest of this group would return to future games, like alpine skier Igaya, who skied for his native Japan, and would win a medal at the 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Games.

Ivy Leaguers also had success on the figure skating front. Dick Button (Harvard, 1952) won his second consecutive gold medal. He did it demanding fashion, voted to first place by all nine judges, as he performed the first triple loop ever seen in competition. The jump required him to make three complete revolutions before touching down. Only four years prior, when he won his first gold medal, he incorporated a doubleaxel into his performance, which he had only learned two days before. In the 1952 Games, Hayes A. Jenkins (Harvard, 1959) watched his fellow Crimson Dick Button in awe, and finished in fourth place himself, he would move up to the gold four years later. On the ladies' side, Tenley Albright (Harvard, 1953) placed second. Albright had overcome nonparalytic polio in her childhood years to dominate ladies figure skating, she too would win the gold medal four years later.