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Before Bart Swings and Hanne Desmet: the story of all Belgian medals at the Winter Games
Crowned Olympic champion in the mass start (mass-start) in speed skating on Saturday at the Beijing Olympics, Bart Swings won the 8th Belgian medal in history at the Winter Olympics, the 2nd in gold, following Micheline Lannoy and Pierre Baugniet, Olympic champions in figure skating in 1948 in Saint-Moritz.
Belgium had also won the silver medal in the four-man bobsleigh at the 1948 Olympic Games. Until this year, it was the only edition of the Winter Games during which the Belgian delegation won two medals. . A performance now equaled thanks to Bart Swings and Hanne Desmet, bronze medalist in the 1000m in shorttrack on February 11
8 medals throughout history
Belgium had won its first medal in 1924 at the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix with a bronze medal in the four-man bobsleigh.
Four years later, figure skater Robert Van Zeebroeck came third in St. Moritz.
It was once more in the canton of Graubünden, during the 1948 Olympic Games once more organized in Saint-Moritz, that Belgium once more experienced the joys of the podium. Figure skaters Micheline Lannoy and Pierre Baugniet then became Olympic pairs champions, while the men’s four-man bobsleigh team (Max Houben, Freddy Mansfeld, Louis-Georges Niels and Jacques Mouvet) won silver.
After that, it will be necessary to wait half a century to see a Belgian on the podium. Former Olympic champion with the Netherlands (in 1992 over 10,000 m), Bart Veldkamp, who became Belgian in 1996, and the only Belgian participant in the Nagano Olympics in 1998, ranks third in the 5,000 m.
Twenty years passed before Bart Swings became Olympic vice-champion in the new speed skating event mass start (mass-start) at the Pyeongchang Games in 2018.
The Louvanist offered himself a new Olympic medal on Saturday, in gold, making the Brabançonne resound in the Chinese capital.
