"Everybody was still very, very happy - politicians, athletes, the public, inhabitants," said Gerhard Heiberg, the Norwegian International Olympic Committee (IOC) member, who had attended a 20th anniversary celebration in the town a few days before I spoke to him. "So I felt that this is still a very, very strong image of Lillehammer."

Heiberg, who was President, chairman and chief of the Games organising committee, joining the IOC a few months after the Closing Ceremony, went on: "In the IOC, the image is still rosy...People are still talking about not only the best Winter Games ever, but the best Games ever."

What then were the key ingredients in this Scandinavian success story?

For Heiberg, the positive reaction had "a lot to do with the enthusiasm of the people". This brought to the fore what he called "the emotional side of the Games. That's what made the impact. The atmosphere was fantastic."

Gerhard Heiberg believes people still talk about Lillehammer 1994 being the best Games ever ©Getty Images


Care was taken to convey the sense of excitement on the ground in Oppland to television viewers all around the world. As former IOC marketing director Michael Payne wrote in his book on the business behind the Games, Olympic Turnaround: "In Albertville two years earlier, most of the spectators had been placed behind the television cameras, and therefore were not visible to the television viewers. But the Lillehammer producers decided to place the spectators as a backdrop to the athletic performance. The effect was dramatic."

The second thing Heiberg mentioned - which would have been much appreciated by all those attending the Games in person, whether in a professional capacity or as spectators - was "attention to detail. Everything functioned 100 per cent. That was also a feeling: that there was nothing that didn't function well."

This sense of leaving no stone unturned would have been accentuated by another innovation highlighted by Payne: "They built the first truly integrated design programme of any Olympic Games."

The designers, Payne said, "chose 'materials with an emphasis on solidity, honesty, authenticity and environmental awareness'. The pictograms were inspired by Norwegian petroglyphs - rock carvings thousands of years old. They reinforced the idea of the Games returning to the birthplace of winter sports."

A third element was singled out by Heiberg: the uniformly bright sunny weather with which the Games were blessed - or as he put it, "No cloud for sixteen days". As a consequence, he remembered, the forecasters dispatched by the Norwegian weather service were able to put their feet up "because there was nothing on the horizon".

The Lillehammer 1994 design programme was inspired by Norwegian petroglyphs ©Getty Images


Of course, the enthusiasm of the home crowds will always be buttressed by a strong performance by the host-nation's athletes. Led by triple gold medal-winning speed skater Johann Olav Koss, the Norwegian team did not disappoint, gathering 10 gold medals in all and finishing second in the medals table behind Russia. What is more, Norway's overall haul of 26 medals was the highest of any nation.

Here again the organisers had done their groundwork. As Heiberg told me: "We knew very well that to make this a success in Norway we needed medals. So we helped the Norwegian Olympic Committee...so our athletes could be prepared for getting the medals."

Even before they started, the Lillehammer Games had been awaited with keen anticipation for two deeply contrasting reasons.

The first was a much-publicised attack on US figure skater Nancy Kerrigan that led eventually to four men, including the ex-husband of rival figure skater Tonya Harding, spending time in prison. Kerrigan recovered and skated to silver behind Oksana Baiul, a 16-year-old Ukrainian. Harding, who finished down the field, later pleaded guilty to conspiring to hinder prosecution of the attackers and received three years' probation and community service.

Norway, led by Johann Olav Koss, secured 10 gold medals in all at Lillehammer 1994 ©Getty Images


The second reason was that Lillehammer was to be the first Winter Olympics held in a different year to the Summer Games of the same Olympic cycle. It was thus under pressure to show that the Winter Games could be more than a warm-up act for the main event.

"We felt this was the right decision; it suited us fine," Heiberg told me. "We were alone. It attracted more attention, so we think it was an advantage for us."

Beyond the snowbound gingerbread houses of Lillehammer, parts of the world were in a state as far removed from a fairy tale as it is possible to imagine.

Just a week before the Games started, a single mortar shell slammed into the market square in Sarajevo, host of the 1984 Winter Olympics, killing 68 people in what was at that time the worst single atrocity in Bosnia's cruel civil war.

The carnage cast a shadow over the Lillehammer Games, with then IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch using the Opening Ceremony to call for everyone watching at home and on-site to stand up for a moment's silence. "Please stop fighting. Please stop killing. Drop your guns please," the Spaniard appealed.

Juan Antonio Samaranch used the Lillehammer 1994 Opening Ceremony to call on the world to stop fighting, stop killing and drop their guns as the civil war tore through Bosnia ©Getty Images


Heiberg remembers Samaranch telling him when he arrived in Norway that he would have to leave for a couple of days to go to Sarajevo. "He went down there and said, 'Stop fighting'", Heiberg told me. "It didn't help, but it was the right thing to do. Everyone respected Samaranch for taking the risk and going down on such a mission."

For British viewers in particular, there was an echo of the Sarajevo Games in the farewell bronze medal-winning ice-dance performance of Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, a decade on from the famous interpretation of Ravel's Bolero with which they swept all before them in Yugoslavia.

Other sporting highlights of the 1994 Games included Alaskan-based Tommy Moe pipping local favourite Kjetil André Aamodt, surely the first name in the directory of Olympic medal-winners, in the men's downhill, and Italian star Alberto Tomba charging to silver, his fifth and last Olympic medal, behind Austria's Thomas Stangassinger in the men's slalom - this in spite of a highly disappointing first run.

Not quite everything went without a hitch for the organisers. The Opening Ceremony's pièce de résistance came when the Olympic Torch was taken down the ski-jump by an athlete dressed in white on its way to the cauldron.

Unfortunately, the ski-jumper originally assigned this task was injured in practice, so they had to rely on a stand-in. The episode provoked some momentary friction between the IOC and the organising committee.

As Heiberg explained: "When Samaranch came to Lillehammer, he wanted to go to see the man in hospital. He said to me, 'Mr Heiberg, you cannot do the same for the Opening Ceremony'. I said, 'I'm sorry, I cannot take that order'.

The Lillehammer 1994 Opening Ceremony's pièce de résistance came when the Olympic Torch was taken down the ski-jump by an athlete dressed in white on its way to the cauldron ©Getty Images



"That is the only time I quarrelled with Samaranch. The other man jumped only 70 metres, so that went well. I knew he wouldn't jump too far, though I thought that the flame might go out. [It didn't.] Afterwards, Samaranch said to me, 'I don't like people who don't take my orders, but that's OK.'

"After the bow and arrow in Barcelona [where, in the previous Games in 1992, the flame had been lit by an archer firing a burning arrow into the cauldron] we needed something spectacular. This was spectacular. I am very sorry for the man who got injured, but I am glad we did what we did."

With over $350 million (£209 million/€255 million) in broadcast revenues, the most for any Winter Games at that time, raised from rights holders such as CBS in the US, Lillehammer was a financial success too.

According to Heiberg, the surplus of NKr425 million (£41 million/$70 million/€51 million) was used to maintain the associated sports facilities for the next 15 years. "We did not want any white elephants."

I must say when I once skied into Lillehammer, the Olympic facilities did seem to me rather to dominate the surrounding snowscape. But Heiberg says the locals are very proud of them and that they attract plenty of visitors both from Norway and abroad.

Their positive legacy stands to be further demonstrated in two years' time when Lillehammer hosts the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics. The organisers of these second Winter Youth Games do have to build an Olympic Village, Heiberg told me, "because that was torn down". But, he feels, existing sporting venues should cope fine with some upgrades.

Lillehammer is now gearing up to host the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics ©Getty Images


There remains one important question: if Lillehammer 1994 was such an outstanding success, why is opinion apparently so divided over the wisdom of Oslo's 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic bid? A recent poll indicated that more than half of Norwegians believe their Government should refuse to provide the necessary financial guarantees.

"People basically want the Games to come back to Norway," Heiberg insists. "Everybody without exception thinks Lillehammer was a success for the country, the IOC and the world.

"But people are afraid that the Games are too big and cost too much money."

Here the lavish figures being bandied around as the alleged cost of Sochi 2014, once all infrastructure is taken into account, can hardly be helping.

Nonetheless, Heiberg believes, the country that has won more Winter Olympic medals over the years than any other*, will ultimately opt to stay the course.

"I think the Norwegian population will accept we should do it once more," he told me. "So I think Oslo will say 'Yes' and will be a really good thing for the country."

With neighbours Stockholm recently withdrawing from the race and other potentially attractive host-cities having to shelve plans to bid in the wake of local referendums, many in the IOC will be hoping he is right.

*Counting the USSR, Russia and the 1992 Unified team, as well as Germany, West Germany and East Germany, as separate entities.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.