Venezuela at the 1998 Winter Olympics

The following is the list of number of competitors in the Games.^[4]

Iginia Boccalandro was 36 years old at the time of the Nagano Olympics, and was making her Olympic debut.^[5][6] Before the Games, the Salt Lake City, Utah resident claimed that "I'm too old and fat"; she said her real goal was the 2002 Winter Olympics, by which time she would have had enough training to be a contender.^[7] The women's singles event was held over two days, 10–11 February. Each athlete took four runs down the course, two on each day, with the sum of the times of all four runs determining the rankings.^[8] On the first day, Boccalandro posted run times of 54.232 seconds^[9] and 53.962 seconds.^[10] After the first day of competition, she was in 28th place out of 29 competitors, with a time of 1 minute and 48.194 seconds.^[11] On the second day her run times were 54.133 seconds in the third run,^[12] and 56.990 seconds for her fourth and final run.^[13]

Boccalandro's total time for her four runs was therefore 3 minutes and 39.317 seconds, putting her in 28th position.^[8] The gold medal was won by Silke Kraushaar-Pielach of Germany in a time of 3 minutes and 23.779 seconds, the silver was taken by her compatriot Barbara Niedernhuber, and the bronze was won by Angelika Neuner of Austria.^[8] Boccalandro would achieve her goal and return to Olympic competition in her hometown four years later at the 2002 Winter Olympics.^[6]