WBFK World Champion Anatoly Nosyrev (RUS) will meet Kelly Leo (USA) for the ISKA Kickboxing World Championship Superheavyweight title fight in Sochi on August 17th.

Anatly Nosyrev (RUS)

Previously promised program for monitoring forests and effects of “olympic” construction projects in Sochi and Krasnodar region has been launched. Monitoring data will be published and publicly available on official website of the Federal Forestry Ministry, any violation will be reported to the government authorities.

The digital data gathered during this program will also be used to create new maps and locate places with high risk of avalanches.

This program is part of wider federal program for monitoring environment in Sochi during realization of the Federal Targeted Program for the development of Sochi.

S7, also known as «Sibir» Airlines, will start operation of St.-Petersburg — Sochi flights for the first time. Three and a half hours flights will operate every day starting September 17 with starting price of $145 (3700 rub); «Sibir» also offers lower cost tickets online – web-price for these flights will start at $80 (1990 rub).

Another flight, Novosibirsk – Samara – Sochi will start operating on September 19th and will also be a daily flight. These flights will start at $225 (5700 rub) one way.

«Dexter» Airlines will also start operating flights to Sochi, as well as several other southern cities, from Rostov and Krasnodar. «Dexter» is Russia’s first airline to offer “on-demand” flights. With prices “by kilometer” and park of Swiss-made Pilatus PC-12 and Russian-made M-101T airplanes, «Dexter» offers on-demand and regular flights from Business and VIP terminals, with registration times under 15 minutes. Prices for flights to Sochi will be $0.6-1 per kilometer for regular flights, and $4-5/ km for on-demand flights.

I thought I was special. But I guess I’m not… :)
There are a couple of comments from chernyshenko@mtu-net.pp.ru in my previous post on Sochi Olympic mascot, I was wondering if it could possibly be from the Sochi-2014 team. But then found this same text on few other Russian sites, mostly forums and news discussion boards. It’s someone’s way to reach to the Internet community to get as many votes as possible, let’s just hope this “someone” is on Sochi-2014’s organizational team :)

In any event, I’ve translated this list, and added some comments for things that may not be obvious for foreigners, hopefully this helps you understand some of those picks.

So, what do you think should be Sochi’s Olympic mascot?!!

Read the rest of this entry »

Several newborn girls in Chelyabinsk were named Olimpiada (“Olympics” in Russian), reports First Channel TV. I knew something like this would happen… really! This name is used in Russia, but it was never popular (well, actually, I don’t know what was going on with baby naming during Olympics in Moscow :)). Diminutive form of this name is Lipa.

Edit: I apologise, Valeria was Viktor’s daughter, not his granddaughter.

Five years old daughter of Viktor Kolodyazhny died today in a hospital after road accident on Friday. On Friday night, Kolodyazhny with his family was taking a ride in tourist carriage in St. Petersburg, when their carriage was hit from behind by a car. Valeria Kolodyazhnaya fell out of carriage and under car’s wheels. The driver is arrested; he did not try to evade the place of the accident.

Sad :-(

Video: Viktor Kolodyazhny and his daughter Valeria support Sochi Olympic bid.

«Real Estate Krasnodar» blog has a couple of new good articles on real estate in Sochi.
Visit it to read professional analysis and forecast of real estate market in Sochi, and find out new-built property prices.

• Average prices for residential premises under construction in districts of Sochi
• SOCHI Real Estate Market Development Forecasts

I’ve made my first website on professional hosting four years ago, and since then I went through four web hosting companies. And after awesome service I’ve received today on Skynet Hosting I wanted to voice a few thoughts on choosing web hosting based on my personal experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Russian Thai Boxing Federation has applied to host 2008 European Thai Boxing Championship in Sochi, Russia. Sochi has strong Martial Arts traditions, for example we have one of Russia’s best Muai Thai clubs – «Atlan». Several of Atlan students have become Russian and European champions in Thai- and kickboxing. Also, Sochi often (every year?) hosts finals of the Russian «Pankration» (aka “Russian Absolute” – Russian version of UFC) Championship.

According to preliminary calculations, the sledge and bobsled course to be constructed for Olympic Gmes in Sochi will be longest and fastest in the World. This will be thwe second bobsled course in Russia, the construction of the first one will be completed some time next year near Moscow. Head coach of the Russian bobsled team said that Moscow course will most likely be used mostly for training and testing on new bobsleds, while Sochi’s course will most likely become course for competitions.

Russian Olympic Committee is planning to sign a contract with OC of Vancouver – the host of the Winter Olympics 2010 – to allow Russian organizers to observe the process of Olympics preparations in Canada. They will also study preparation experiences of other host cities from previous Olympic Games.

• “Base Element”, the new owner of Sochi airport, is arguing with “Russian Railways” on weather to build a light railway from the Airport to the city’s center and future Olympic venues, or to build full railway extention from the Adler rail station to the Airport. Time frames and money are the questions at hand.
• “Systema Gals” development company plans to build 100 000 sq. meters resort complex by year 2010, with will include five-star hotel and apartments, and 100 meters tall tower. I hope people don’t go building little Manhattan in Sochi, as Sochi is in seismic zone.
• “Moscow Capital” bank will invest $150 mln in building “Solnechnaya Polyana” (Sunny Valley) alpine skiing resort in Krasnaya Polyana – where Olympic skiing and sliding venues will be located. The construction will start in 2008, and is to be completed by year 2013.
• Land prices in Sochi exceeded Moscow prices. One “sotka” (100 sq meters) by the sea now costs $150 000.

Ok, there’s no official contest for Olympics 2014. Not yet anyways. However Sochi-2014 organizational team promised in the recent interview that the Mascot will be selected through public contest. So, people didn’t wait long to overwhelm them with ideas :) It seems most people want to see a bear as a mascot for Sochi Olympics. All kind of “bear” ideas were sent organizational team’s way, from reusing “Mishka” of 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow (everyone in Russia adores him! :)) to other “Mishkas” from cartoons and famous paintings. Other, more exotic, ideas include ski-jumping dolphin, a seagull (the last name of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Chaika, means “seagull” in Russian; he was just selected to keep an eye on Olympic money spending), and five (for Olympic rings) gas pipelines with flames :o) But it is very likely that Cheburashka, current Russian Olympic Team mascot, will become Sochi Games mascot. Besides, (american) people confuse it with a bear all the time anyways, I have one in my office : )

Mascot of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow

I personally think, that most likely the mascot will be created by the professionals (please, God, make them NOT select the same ones that did London’s logo!), and they just want to see what people want, and to keep up the excitement.

So, do you have an idea for Sochi Olympics mascot? If you do, you can send it to the head of Sochi-2014 team Dmitry Chernyshenko to chernyshenko@mtu-net.pp.ru

Chebu in my office :)

You probably have noticed I’ve added a couple more banners to the site. These are affiliate programs I’m trying out to see if they can make me rich :) So far they’ve been proven useless, but I’ll give it a few weeks try. Another way people make money on things like this (like new Olympics host city becomes known) is cybersquatting. I’ll admit, I bought a few domain names with Sochi in it, but don’t really like any of ‘em and don’t know what to do with them yet. I’ve never done anything like this before. Most likely I’ll release many of them next year.

Anyways, the reason I started talking about this is there are two domains are being sold on molotok.ru auction site: Sochi.pro, with minimum bid of €2500 (and there’s one person bidding already), and Sochi.info, with minimum bid of …  €3 000 000. It’s very unlikely he’ll be able to sell it for anywhere close to this price, though.

Radisson SAS “Lazurnaya” had accepted its first reservation for the Olympics dates. The person who made the reservation is Mikhail Seslavinsky, head of the Russian Federal Press and Mass Communications Agency. As he says, he made the reservation as a private citizen, after talking to his wife and two kids.