The biggest news in Sochi today is that IOC evaluation group, which arrived a day before, has begun their five day tour of the city. I guess we won’t get any on the results or even rumors, at least not ’till all three candidate cities are toured by IOC. The only kind of reaction from the evaluation group was that they were amazed by the mountains/sea view of Sochi’s during landing. Meanwhile the city will be “hit” by over 80 cultural programs  this week, most of which (if not all) will have “in support of Olympics in Sochi” slogan. Some of these events will be visited by IOC. They will also meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will probably confirm once again government’s financial commitments and promises of completing all constructions on time.

Actually this is the weakest point of Sochi’s bid – having everything done on time. That is because 80-90% of all Olympic projects must be created from the ground up. There were previous talks about hiring American and European companies to help Russian companies to manage all the construction, as Americans and Europeans have a lot of experience in managing projects this big.