Sapporo was the first city in Asia to host the Winter Olympics, when Japan staged the 1972 Games.
The Olympics ran from February 3 to 13, 1972, and marked the first Winter Games held outside Europe and North America. Sapporo had originally been awarded the 1940 Winter Olympics, but Japan relinquished the event after the 1937 invasion of China; those Games were later canceled because of World War II.
The 1972 Games featured 35 events across six sports and attracted athletes from 35 nations. Japan celebrated a landmark victory when Yukio Kasaya won the normal-hill ski-jumping gold medal—the country's first Winter Olympic gold. His teammates Akitsugu Konno and Seiji Aochi completed a Japanese medal sweep.
Sapporo's achievement is sometimes confused with Nagano, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1998, or Beijing, which hosted them in 2022. Both came later. Pyeongchang hosted South Korea's first Winter Olympics in 2018, but it was not Asia's first host city.