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Report nowAt the 1972 Sapporo Games, men and women were still strictly segregated in the Olympic Village. Two-time Olympic champion Maite Nadig recounts how a cross-country skier climbed over the barbed wire.
Marie-Theres Nadig loved life in the Olympic Village—and not just because she brought home two gold medals from Sapporo in 1972 at the age of just 17. “That was amazing. I’ve never experienced anything quite like that since.” Because the Games were on a more modest scale back then, all the athletes lived in a small village. “That would be unthinkable today,” says Nadig.
However, there was a strict separation between women and men. While the men lived in smaller buildings with three or four stories, the women were housed in two high-rises. Male visitors? Strictly forbidden!
"Not everyone followed the rules," says Nadig, recounting an anecdote. "A Swiss cross-country skier wanted to see if he could make it over to where we women were and climbed over the tall barbed-wire fence. He made it."
And what did he want? “I guess he just wanted to prove that you could get in there.” They would have had to hide him and somehow smuggle him out again, says Nadig, “but I don’t know exactly where he was or with whom. I wasn’t really involved in that.”
When it was pointed out that she, too, had been 17 at the time, Nadig replied with a smile, “We weren’t as green as some people thought.”
15.07.2026, 18:37
