Manuela Di Centa and Lyubov Yegorova dominated women's cross-country skiing, taking five and four medals for Italy and Russia respectively.

Vreni Schneider won a complete set of medals for Switzerland in Alpine skiing, while Norway took a podium sweep in the men's combined competition.

Lillehammer was elected to host the 1994 Winter Games at the 94th IOC Session, held in Seoul on 15 September 1988, two days before the start of the 1988 Summer Olympics.

The overall responsibility for the games was held by the Lillehammer Olympic Organizing Committee, which was created on 14 November 1988 and led by Gerhard Heiberg.

On 11 February 1993, it became a joint venture owned 51% by Lillehammer Municipality (as main stakeholder), 24.5% by the Government of Norway, and 24.5% by the Norwegian Olympic Committee.

As the 1988 Winter Games, the Organizing Committee decided not to build a specific Olympic Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies and opted to conduct them at the ski jumping hill, Lysgårdsbakken.

[26] After speeches by Heiberg and IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, the Games were officially declared opened by King Harald V.[27] and the Olympic Anthem was performed by the lyrical singer, Sissel Kyrkjebø.

Originally this task had rested upon Ole Gunnar Fidjestøl, but after he broke an arm in a practice jump, his back-up, Stein Gruben, received the honor.

In the combined, Norway took a medal sweep, with Lasse Kjus winning ahead of Aamodt and Harald Christian Strand Nilsen.

The downhill was won by Germany's Katja Seizinger, super-G by the United States' Diann Roffe, the giant slalom by Italy's Deborah Compagnoni, and the combined by Sweden's Pernilla Wiberg.

[30] Bronze winner Sergei Tarasov won the 20 km individual ahead of Germany's Frank Luck and Sven Fischer.

[37] In the 4 × 5 km relay, Norway and Russia kept up with each other until the final stage, in which Anita Moen lost to Yegorova, with Italy finishing third.

[38] On 6 January, Tonya Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly and his friend Shawn Eckardt, conspired with Shane Stant to club fellow female figure skater Nancy Kerrigan in the knee.

[40] In the ladies' singles, Ukraine's Oksana Baiul narrowly won ahead of Kerrigan and Chen Lu, with Harding finishing eighth.

[41][2] In the men's singles, Russia's Alexei Urmanov won ahead of Canada's Elvis Stojko and France's Philippe Candeloro.

[42] Relaxation of the rules led to several former stars returning, such as ice dancing 1984 Champions Great Britain's Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, who took a bronze behind Russians Oksana Grishuk and Evgeny Platov, and Maya Usova and Alexander Zhulin.

[43] In pair skating, the Russians also took a double, with Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov winning ahead of Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev.

[46] In the men's aerials, Switzerlands's Andreas Schönbächler won ahead of Canada's Philippe LaRoche and Lloyd Langlois, with Canadians also claiming the fourth and sixth places.

[47] In the women's disciplines, Norway was the only nation to take two medals; Stine Lise Hattestad won the moguls ahead of the United States' Liz McIntyre.

[48] In the aerials, Lina Cheryazova won, claiming Uzbekistan's only medal,[49] ahead of Sweden's Marie Lindgren and Norway's Hilde Synnøve Lid.

Germany's Georg Hackl won the men's singles, making him the first to defend an Olympic title in the event in thirty years.

In the women's singles, Italy's Gerda Weissensteiner won ahead of Germany's Susi Erdmann and Austria's Andrea Tagwerker.

[56] The own debuts was start Nedžad Lomigora from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Marco Feder from Liechtenstein, Sminon J. Payne from Bermuda, Paul Hix from United Kingdom, Josef Svarek from Slovakia, Roger White from Australia.

In the individual normal hill/15 km, Japan's Kenji Ogiwara had only lost a single event in the season's World Cup, but came in sixth on the hill, which was won by Norway's Fred Børre Lundberg.

He won the event after finishing eight-best in the skiing, ahead of Japan's Takanori Kono, Norway's Bjarte Engen Vik and Ogiwara in fourth.

[60] In the men's 5000 meter relay, South Korea did not enter after a fall in the sole qualifying event, which took place in March 1993.

These rules were, however, not applied to bobsled events, enabling the U.S. Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica to compete in that sport.

[84] The IOC appealed for a truce in the ongoing Bosnian War and the Siege of Sarajevo, the city that had hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics.

[85] The former Soviet republics of Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Ukraine and Uzbekistan participated as independent nations.

Bosnia and Herzegovina made their Olympic debut, following their independence from Yugoslavia in 1992; the composition of their four-man bob team was one Croat, two Bosniaks and a Serb, mirroring the ethnic diversity of the country.