The eyes of the world will soon be turning to Paris, where thousands of athletes will gather for the 33rd Olympic Games.

But today (Thursday) marks another milestone in Olympic history.

One hundred years ago, in the small French alpine town of Chamonix, just over 250 athletes from 16 nations gathered to compete in nine sporting disciplines.

It was the first-ever Winter Olympics.

The games lasted just 11 days and featured men — and a handful of female figure skaters — dressed in a motley assortment of tweed jackets and woolly jumpers, skating, shooting and hurling themselves down mountainsides on heavy wooden skis.

It was a far cry from the modern event. In Beijing in 2022, there were nearly 3,000 competitors, most of the snow came out of snow machines, and there were nearly as many women competing as men.

Over the century since Chamonix, while there have been huge changes in some disciplines, others have managed to stay close to their roots.

Technology, television and gender balance have been revolutionary forces.

One of the key changes, according to Richard Baka from Victoria University's Olympic and Paralympic Research Centre, has been the venues.

"Curling, figure skating and ice hockey were all in outdoor arenas [in Chamonix].... sometimes with natural ice, which made it a bit tricky if there was snow or warm weather," Dr Baka explains.  

Here's how the nine sports that featured in Chamonix in 1924 have changed over the past century.

Bobsleigh

The original bobsleds were made out of mostly wood before they were later upgraded to steel. Now, most sleds are made from carbon fibre, fibreglass and steel.

"The big first bobsleds were very cumbersome and bulky," Dr Baka says.

"Now they [have] trimmed them down and they use all the new technology that lets them be more streamlined."

In 1952 a new rule limited the total weight of the members of the bobsleigh crew to stop teams from using super-heavyweight bobsledders to their advantage. 

Dr Baka says more events have been added, including singles and women's events, however there is still room for improvement in gender balance. 

The original four-man event is still run at the Winter Games. 

Cross-country skiing

Unlike the bobsleigh, cross-country skiing looks much like it did 100 years ago.

"It's one that's withstood the test of time," Dr Baka says. 

But there were no female cross-country skiers at the 1924 Games — women were not allowed to compete in the discipline until the 1952 Oslo Games.

New technology has made skis and poles more streamlined, and athletes are much faster now. Norway's Thorleif Haug won gold at the 1924 50-kilometre event, finishing the race in 3 hours, 44 minutes and 32 seconds. Russia's Alexander Bolshunov completed the same race in 2022 in 1:11:32.7.

Curling

Dating back to the 16th century, curling is a team sport played by sliding stones on a sheet of ice towards a targeted area which is segmented into four circles.

Mike Haggerty from World Curling, the Olympic governing body, says there have been tweaks to the rules, such as at what stage of the game you can remove the opponent's stone from play, and time limits on games.

"While the stones themselves remain the same – 19.95 kilograms of granite from Ailsa Craig, an uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland — other equipment and playing uniforms, including shoes, have all been modernised," Mr Haggerty says.

"In particular, brushes have seen much development from hairs and corn brooms to modern-day fabrics, mostly eliminating the risk of a stone being knocked off course by a stray hair or debris on the ice."

And in another throwback to an earlier age, Mr Haggerty says the sport and its players are still guided by "The Spirit of Curling".

"Basically, this makes curling an honour sport in which, although guided by umpires, the players police the event themselves, for example agreeing which stones are closer to the target, replacing any accidentally moved stones and, if considered appropriate, conceding a game at any point," he explains. 

By and large, he says, the sport has remained much the same since Victorian times. 

Figure skating

Figure skating was the only sport open to women at the 1924 Games. There were also men's and pairs competitions.

It is one of the oldest Olympic sports, featuring for the first time at the 1908 Summer Olympics held in London.

Figure skating is one of the sports that has changed the most since 1924. Modern figure skating has a more standardised judging system, the tricks are more complex, and the amount of personal expression allowed to skaters is always changing.

Dr Baka says a fixing scandal in 2002, where Russian judges conspired so Russian skaters would win the pairs' competition, led to a rule change. 

"There's less opportunities to try and influence the judging," he says.

In 1924, like many events, figure skating was performed on an outdoor rink. Now, Dr Baka says, as one of the most sought-after events for spectators, it is held in one of the best indoor stadiums of each Games. 

"It's one of the flagships, one of the hardest tickets to get," he adds. 

In the 1990s the rule of having compulsory moves was scrapped in order to boost the sport's popularity.  

The skates themselves have also changed, and the costumes significantly. In the early years female figure skaters wore long skirts, in accordance with contemporary dress codes. The only problem was it hindered the judges' ability to see the technicality of the figures being made by the skaters, and so the skirts progressively became shorter. 

The age of competitors has also increased. The 1924 Olympics featured 11-year-old Norwegian skater Sonja Henie, and although she did not win any medals at those Games, she went on to win gold in 1928, 1932 and 1936.

Currently, an athlete must be at least 17 years old to enter. 

Although the tricks have advanced, skaters still perform jumps and turns much as they did on the ice in Chamonix 100 years ago. 

Ice hockey

Ice hockey has a reputation as a dangerous and physical sport, and the gear,  particularly safety equipment, has significantly improved since 1924.

Modern ice hockey players are practically covered head to toe in padding to help prevent injury. Hockey sticks themselves have also undergone numerous transformations. Originally they were made from a single piece of wood, now they are typically made from carbon fibre. 

Dr Baka says although the hockey stick has undergone many changes, the puck itself has remained much the same. Teams are still six-a-side and the game is still played over three 20-minute periods.

Women's ice hockey was not played in the Winter Olympics until the 1998 Nagano Games in Japan.

Military patrol/biathlon

The Alps around the Italian and Austrian border were a key battleground in World War I, and one of the sports on offer just six years later in 1924 had a distinctly military feel to it.

Military patrol and biathlon both combine cross-country skiing with rifle shooting. 

The 1924 military patrol featured teams made up of two privates, a senior officer and a junior officer skiing for 30km before unslinging their rifles for the shooting contest.

The modern biathlon is now an individual sport (with the exception of the relay event) with the longest race now 20km.

But aside from the name and the team element, the sport remains much the same. 

Nordic combined

Nordic combined, as the name suggests, is a combined winter sport involving cross-country skiing and ski jumping. 

Over time the cross-country portion of the event has changed in length. At the 1924 Games athletes raced 18km before the jump. 

That was reduced to 15km at the 1956 Cortina D'Ampezzo Games in Italy, and then down to 10km at the 2010 Vancouver Games.  

Dr Baka says Nordic combined is unlikely to ever be dropped from the Winter Games.

"It's one of the original sports and the Europeans love it," he says. "And there's a lot of participation." 

Because it is a legacy event, not much has changed from the original.

Ski jumping

Ski jumping is where athletes ski down a ramp and take off in a jump to land as far away as possible. 

The jump distances have increased more than tenfold. The 1924 gold medallist Jacob Tullin Thams recorded a result of 18.96 metres from what historians believe was a 70m hill. 

The gold medallist for the normal hill event at the 2022 Beijing Games, Ryoyu Kobayashi, jumped 275m.

Kobayashi jumped from a 90m hill but the distances reached might also have something to do with changing technique. Over time athletes changed from holding their arms forward in a superman-like shape with their legs and skis straight, to holding their arms back and spreading their skis into a V-shape. 

Dr Baka says ski-jumpers now train in wind tunnels to make themselves as aerodynamic as possible.

Uniforms have also changed to make the event more television-friendly. 

Speed skating

The number of speed skating events has increased significantly since 1924. The first Games had just four events, while the most recent Games had 18. 

Women's speed skating was not an official Olympic sport until 1960. 

Dr Baka says most of the changes revolve around technology and improving the uniforms. 

Locally, he says Steven Bradbury's famous win after the other competitors fell at the 2002 Games saw Australia start to invest more in winter sports.

Speed skating has barely changed since the sport debuted at the Olympics.