FEATURE | OLYMPICS
Between the developer and the deep Black Sea At the start of November, with a little over 15 months to go until the Olympic opening ceremony, Sochi staged the first Peace and Sport International Forum to be held outside Monaco. For the Russian organisers it was a chance to show off the progress of the city’s hugely ambitious 2014 project. For many delegates, it was a first encounter with the host of what promises to be an unusual winter Games. By Eoin Connolly
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t will be cool for athletes. I think when you think about a global perspective, no one has an idea,” says Steve Mesler, an Olympic gold medallist in the four-man bobsleigh at Vancouver 2010. “So they’re going to tune into the Olympic Games all over the world and they’re going to see palm trees and beaches, and skiing and ice hockey. It’s going to be… people aren’t going to understand what they’re watching I think, really. It’ll be cool.” Mesler is speaking in Sochi at the start of November, filling time before a gala dinner for the Peace and Sport International Forum at the Grand Hotel in Krasnaya Polyana. He is attending in his capacity as the founder of Classroom Champions, a project which introduces Olympians to schools as mentors. A veteran of US Olympic teams in Salt Lake City and Turin as well as Vancouver, Mesler admits that Sochi will have “a huge footprint to fill” in matching the Games in Canada in 2010. “Construction is… construction’s going to happen,” he chuckles, “especially as they’re building most of the venues. “That being said, the Russians are going to get things done. They’re excited. It’s their first hosting of an Olympics Games since we didn’t come. So it’s America’s first time in Russia for an Olympic Games.” Sochi 2014 is keen to show the world a winter Games it did not expect. So far, the efforts of local organising committee president Dmitry Chernyshenko and his team have reaped notable successes – most telling of all a marketing programme that has raked in over US$1.2 billion
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“They’re going to tune into the Olympic Games all over the world and they’re going to see palm trees and beaches, and skiing and ice hockey.” in sponsorship since 2009, an Olympic record that is three times the total promised by the bid team and one and a half times the haul of Vancouver 2010. At no point has there been any doubt, either, that the considerable financial and political weight of the Russian government has fallen behind the operation. Now, with London 2012 a cherished memory, the reality of what it will take to accomplish those Olympic ambitions is as plain here as it has ever been. The scope of the transformation in Sochi promises wonder but the scale of work required to make it happen is staggering, too. In November, even with some test events just a few weeks away, it remains a feat of imagination to see Sochi as a winter Olympic host. For one thing there remains a distinctly autumnal feel to the place, even up in the western Caucasus Mountains where the trees are reddening in complexion but the thermometer stays poised some way above freezing. Closer to the sea, where the ‘Coastal Cluster’ will welcome indoor events in 2014, there is weather that could pass for a summer’s day in many parts of Europe. The snowflakes which adorn the fences outside the Grand Hotel seem faintly ironic, as though the owners are playing up the disconnect between the expectation of a winter Olympic city and Sochi’s climactic peculiarities. There are
white traces on the peaks above Krasnaya Polyana but otherwise little sign that this will be the world’s highest-profile ski resort in a little under 500 days’ time. Heavy snowfall is never expected until December in these parts – and in recent years it has held off into January – so the organisers have devised the selfexplanatory ‘Sochi 2014: Guaranteed Snow’ programme. Snow collected from reservoirs at the start of the year has been stored in frozen sheets in the mountains, ready for later deployment – the system got a first successful test for the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup in December, when 4,600 cubic metres of snow was laid on the runways at the RusSki Gorki Jumping Centre. Back down on the coast, temperatures will be mild in February 2014, perhaps even rivalling those on drearier days at London’s Paralympics last September. Such a spread in conditions is remarkable for what will be the most compact Games in modern winter Olympic history. It is clear why those behind the project have long held such high hopes for Sochi, a former haunt of holidaying Soviet apparatchiks, as a year-round resort. Sochi itself is growing as a business centre and is a future Formula One host but much of the expected legacy of the Games will be evident here in Krasnaya Polyana. The village – an ‘urban-type
Pictured here on 1st November 2012, the Fisht Stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies of Sochi 2014 before becoming a soccer venue
settlement’ in the Russian administrative nomenclature – is enjoying its second rise from obscurity. At the turn of the 20th century it was identified by Tsar Nicholas II as a new hunting ground, a purpose abandoned with the Russian monarchy. Its proximity to Sochi lent it some appeal as a ski resort during the Soviet era – though it remained relatively inaccessible – while the loss of resorts outside Russia after the break-up of the USSR brought interest from newly wealthy holidaymakers. But the July 2007 decision of the IOC to award Sochi the Games looks like being a decisive moment in its history. The Grand Hotel is undergoing a major expansion in capacity while along the road, enormous commercial and residential developments are rising. Krasnaya Polyana is preparing for life after 2014 as a Val d’Isère of the east – an attractive ski resort with easy access to a milder afternoon’s shopping or socialising in Sochi, and an elite winter sports facility which will keep top Russian athletes from seeking training in western mountain ranges. Town and piste are closely bound: views of the Black Sea
from sections of the mountaintop will be a highlight of many visits, not to mention television coverage in 2014. In the slopes around the Grand Hotel the venues in the ‘Mountain Cluster’ have been taking shape for some time. The Rosa Khutor Alpine Centre is an existing nine-kilometre chain of pistes whose conversion to Olympic standards has come in two phases – the first completed in 2011, the second in time for a series of test events this winter. The extreme park for freestyle competitions is also in place. The routes of the Sanki sliding centre, which will host the luge, skeleton and bobsleigh, are visibly pronounced amidst the fading greenery, and were deemed competition-ready at the end of October. Between the slopes and the sea, construction, as Steve Mesler might have it, is happening. There is a constant rumble down the mountain roads – every second vehicle appears to be carrying heavy goods along one of the largest, busiest construction sites anywhere in the world today. With a little over a year to go until the opening ceremony roughly
one third of the work proposed to prepare Sochi for the Games lies ahead. 80 per cent of spending on the Games has gone on permanent infrastructure and much of what is left to be finished concerns transport. At the foot of the sliding venues is a structure that looks something like a tortoise shell, pared down for some unspecified aerodynamic advantage. For many visitors it will become a familiar sight in February 2014. It is the Krasnaya Polyana terminal of the vital new highspeed rail link that will put the two Olympic zones within 30 minutes of each other, comfortably the shortest journey between indoor and mountain venues at a modern winter Games. In December 2012, Vladimir Putin conducted a progress meeting on one of the early train voyages along the route, which is reported to have been 85 per cent complete by the end of the year. Back in November the appeal of a rapid trip through the valley is readily apparent. Accessibility is almost invariably an issue for the mountain events at any winter
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