1928 Winter Olympics in the context of "Skeleton at the Winter Olympics"

Several tropical nations have participated in the Winter Olympics despite not having the climate for winter sports. Partly because of that, their entries are a subject of human interest stories during the Games. No tropical nation has ever won a Winter Olympic medal.

The first warm-weather, but not fully tropical, nation participating in the Winter Olympics was Mexico. Much of Mexico is at a latitude north of the Tropic of Cancer, and most of the country has a subtropical highland or semi-arid climate, so it is not exclusively a tropical nation. Nonetheless, Mexico made its Winter Olympic debut at the 1928 Winter Olympics with a five-man bobsleigh team that finished eleventh of twenty-three entrants. Mexico did not return again to the Winter Games until the 1984 Winter Olympics.

Anders Olsen Haugen (October 24, 1888 – April 14, 1984) was a Norwegian-American ski jumper who won four national ski jumping championships. He competed in the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix and the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz. Anders Haugen was the first and, as of 2022, only American to win an Olympic medal for ski jumping.

Arnold Clas ("Classe") Robert Thunberg (5 April 1893 – 28 April 1973) was a Finnish speed skater who won five Olympic gold medals – three at the inaugural Winter Olympics held in Chamonix in 1924 (along with a silver and a bronze medal) and two at the 1928 Winter Olympics held in St. Moritz. He was the most successful athlete at both of these Winter Olympics, sharing the honour for 1928 Winter Olympics with Johan Grøttumsbraaten of Norway. No other athlete ever won such a high fraction of all Olympic events at a single Games. He was born and died in Helsinki.

Roald Morel Larsen (1 February 1898 – 28 July 1959) was a World Champion speed skater from Norway. He was born in Kristiania (now Oslo).Roald Larsen's parents were Hans Jacob Larsen, a glazier born in Kristiania in 1870, and Lydia Larsen, born in Porsgrunn in 1865. They had four children, all sons: Jaan Harald (1891), Lyder Ragnar (1895), Roald Morel (1898), and Gelgjermo Stone (1899).

Representing Kristiania Skøiteklub (now Oslo Skøiteklub), Larsen had his best year in 1924, when he became World Allround, European Allround, and Norwegian Allround Champion, in addition to winning two silver and three bronze medals at the 1924 Winter Olympics of Chamonix. One of those Olympic silver medals was on the allround event, a combination of the results of the 500 m, the 1500 m, the 5000 m, and the 10000 m – the only time in Olympic history that there was an allround event. Larsen won several more medals in the years that followed, including another bronze medal at the 1928 Winter Olympics of St. Moritz.

St. Moritz (/ˌsæn məˈrɪts/ SAN mə-RITS, US also /ˌseɪnt -/ SAYNT -⁠, UK also /sənt ˈmɒrɪts/ sənt MORR-its; German, in full: Sankt Moritz [zaŋkt moˈrɪts, ˈmoːrɪts] locally [saŋkt]; Romansh: San Murezzan [sam muˈʁetsən] ; Italian: San Maurizio d'Engandina; French: Saint-Moritz) is a high Alpine resort town in the Engadine in Switzerland, at an elevation of about 1,800 metres (5,910 ft) above sea level. It is Upper Engadine's major town and a municipality in the administrative region of Maloja in the Swiss canton of the Grisons.

St. Moritz lies on the southern slopes of the Albula Alps below the Piz Nair (3,056 m or 10,026 ft) overlooking the flat and wide glaciated valley of the Upper Engadine and Lake St. Moritz. It hosted the Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948.

At the 1928 Winter Olympics, only one bobsleigh event was contested, the five man event. The competition was held on Saturday, 18 February 1928.

Godfrey Dewey (September 3, 1887 – October 18, 1977) was the president of the Lake Placid Organizing Committee and a winter sports facility designer. He was largely responsible for the successful candidature of Lake Placid for the 1932 Winter Olympics. In addition to his role as the U.S. ski team manager he was chosen as the flag bearer for the 1928 Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Dewey was elected to the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1970.

Godfrey Dewey was the son of Melvil Dewey, the inventor of Dewey Decimal Classification, and his first wife Annie Godfrey. He was the father of Katherin Dewey, who, in 1940, piloted her bobsleigh to victory in the US Championships alongside male brakemen; women were subsequently banned from competing with men. Godfrey went on to become the honorary chairman of the Phonemic Spelling Council. His work on World English Spelling may have influenced the development of SoundSpel, as he and Edward Rondthaler corresponded from 1971.