Has there ever been a Winter Olympics in the southern hemisphere?

[Shagnasty]

In the same spirit of some of the others, Hawaii actually has snow skiing and snow boarding available for about half the year on mountains. It has no Olympic quality facilities for winter sports though.

[Richard_Pearse]

@lenicrombie

australia is the only country from the southern hemisphere to win a gold at the winter olympics which is another bit of trivia (alisa camplin in 2002)

And Steven Bradbury (ice skating.)

For those who don’t know, he was last in the sprints by quite a bit when the other three constestants fell just before the finish line.

[shimmery]

@cmkeller

shimmery:

Is the water too cold for swimming, then? I’ve only been in that area once, in late January of 2003, but the weather was sunny and temperatures were in the 70’s. Granted, I didn’t go to the beach swimming - for religious modesty reasons, my family wouldn’t swim at a public beach - but we were at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and a nearby playground, and it felt like decent beach weather.

Yeah, as others have indicated, NorCal in the winter seems impossibly warm and sunny to those of us from the Northeast (I’m from Jersey myself). But after a couple weeks it wears off and then you realize it’s really quite nippy! (Especially at night!) Plus winter is the “rainy season”. It’s more comparable to fall in the Northeast, but without the foliage, and the delicious crispness…