The Olympic Games in the mountains and on the seashore.
Mastering the aftermath of the global economic crises, bureaucratic red tape, and protests by Sochi citizens - the construction of facilities for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games us underway.
The coordinating commission of the International Olympic Committee spent 3 days in Sochi last week. Less than a year ago, the Olympic authorities were here last and as they have mentioned the changes were dramatic.
"The scale of work in Sochi is stunning. Round-the-clock work is going on at 43 objects. More than sixteen thousand people are occupied in the Olympic building. I guess that Sochi is the largest and most ambitious project in Europe. And I am pleased to say, work is on schedule," - said the head of the delegation, Jean Claude Killy.
At his side, the head of the organizing committee "Sochi 2014" Dmitry Chernishenko once again noted, that "the Sochi Olympics will become the most innovative in history".
To highlight its striving for innovations, the committee has organized a video conference with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The premier was brief and announced several figures: this year more that 60 billion rubbles will be allocated for the Olympic construction, that is 29.7 billion from the federal budget, plus 29.1 billion from private sources. Construction work has already been started at 43 Olympic objects, and 153 more are planned to be built.
The organizing committee is also very proud of the fact that the Sochi Olympics and Paralympics will go down in history not just as the most innovative, but also as the most compact. The journey from one sports center to another will take not more then several minutes. The Paralympics will be held in the same buildings; therefore they have been designed meeting the needs of Paralympics athletes. The territory of the Olympic area will be divided into two clusters: the mountain one for biathlon and ski sports, bobsleigh track, ski center, ski-ramps, Snowboard Park, and freestyle center; and the near-shore cluster, where ice competitions will be held. The route from one cluster to another is 48 km. The journey from the mountains to the sea shore and will take not more than 30 minutes thanks to the new railway.
The center of the near-shore cluster will be the Olympic Park which will link all the sporting objects, park area and infrastructure; it can host 70 thousand people at a time. All the glacial arenas will be located as close to each other, as it has never been before. There will be two Olympic Villages in each cluster and the journey from the sporting objects to the villages will take from 5 to 15 minutes.
The construction of the ski complex "Roza Hytor" is almost complete. Next year it will host one of the competitions of the European Mountain Ski Cup. "Roza Hytor", located in mountain ridge Aibga, is a top priority object, since this will see the finish line of all the mountain competitions, as well as high-speed alpine ski track (with level difference about 1 km) and six flying zones.
After the Olympics the Alpine ski center will become one of the largest winter sport resorts in the world, equipped with high level facilities. Nevertheless, Sochi can not expect an increase in the number of number of tourists. As reports Olymps.ru, referring to the European Tour Operators Association, the influence of the Olympic Games on the tourist industry in general is negative. According to its research, not a single host-city of the Olympics experienced an increase in tourist industry. The same may happen in Sochi.
Pavel Martinov. Exclusively for VK.
