«Russia is planning to spend huge amount of money to develop this region, around 12 billion dollars. Almost two thirds of it will go into infrastructure: roads, solving ecological issues, communications, to improve people’s lives. This money will be used to unite people from all over the world around sports. We will use this money not to buy guns, not to buy ammunition, not to buy combat aviation, not to buy tanks. We will use this money with one purpose, so the people from around the planet could gather here, in Sochi, on our territory, and extend hands to each other. We will do everything to ensure Sochi will become worthy capital of the 2014 Olympic Games.»

– Vladimir Putin during meeting with the members of the IOC evaluation commission on their first working day in Sochi.

Aleksandr Zhukov, vice-premier of the Russian Federation and the head of organizational committee for Sochi Olympic bid support, pledged today during his meeting in UN Paris headquarters, that construction of all Olympic projects in Sochi will comply with the requirements of UN Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

Meanwhile UNESCO had offered Sochi its expertise to help in evaluation of Olympic projects.

Over 1200 people volunteered to help during upcoming visit by the International Olympic Committee. All these people will be accepted to volunteer during Olympics if Sochi gets the Games.

Source: yuga.ru

A group of Russian mountain-climber is planning to raise Sochi city flag to the top peaks of World’s five continents. They’ll start with Aconcagua – tallest mountain of South America and all Southern Hemisphere, followed by expeditions to Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, and Everest. After that, they will bring the flag that was on the World’s top peaks to Guatemala, where, in July, IOC will name the official 2014 Winter Olympic host city.

Sochi 2014 bid team has confirmed their plans to locate all Olympic athletes close to the venues. Here’s few quotes from the press release:

“75% of all athletes at the Sochi Games will be housed within 5 minutes of their competition and training venues, for the first time in Olympic Winter Game history.”

“Sochi 2014 promises a more manageable Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, with all elements taking place in a mountain cluster and coastal ice cluster, only 40 minutes apart. While the functional compactness of the Sochi 2014 plan will provide maximum convenience for the Olympic Family, the media, sponsor guests and spectators, it will also greatly enhance the Games experience for the athletes, usually exiled to the farthest reaches of the Village and often forced to spend hours in transit each day.”

“Sochi’s Games plan will allow spectators to easily view multiple events in a single day, and give athletes the unique chance to attend events that they are not competing in.”

Over 100 Sochi cafes and restaurants where selected to service IOC delegates and journalists during their February visit. All menus will be translated to English and stuff will prepare to service foreign guests. In addition to this, many cafes and restaurants are designing new “Olympic oriented” dishes. For example general manager of “Dan” restaurant gave some details on their preparations.

“Instead of simply giving our dishes names that symbolize the Games and sports, we decided to present a look back at the history: we found a lot of useful information about most popular items during past Winter Olympics over the Internet. By now we have designed three new items, and by the end of this week we’ll have twelve. Menus will include year of the Olympic games, host country, and course with description.”

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I found following copy of an AFP article on gamesbids.com forums, but oddly enough I couldn’t find the original. Anyway, this goes together with my previous article about Sochi Bid team’s idea of using ancient Greek mythology during our Bid and Olympics.

PARIS, Jan 16, 2007 (AFP) – Russian Black Sea resort Sochi are hoping that their bid to win the rights to the 2014 Winter Olympics will be aided by an unlikely source – Greek mythological hero Jason and his band of merry Argonauts.
Dmitry Chernyshenko, the bid’s chief executive, told AFP there was a ship taking the same path from the ancient kingdom of Thessaly (in eastern Greece) to Sochi or Colchis as it was known then, as Jason did to pick up the Golden Fleece, as part of their bid to persuade the majority of IOC members at the vote in Guatemala City on July 4 that they deserved to host the Games.
“Basically the gold for the Golden Fleece was taken from the River Mzymmta,” said the charismatic 38-year-old Russian former advertising magnate, whose bid faces off against Austrian resort Salzburg and Pyeongchang in South Korea.
“It is not a bad thing to have such an historical link to the originator of the Olympic Games (Greece) and we have organised for a boat to sail the same route as the original ship the Argo did as part of our campaign to win.” ….

“Ves’ Sport” quotes Ed Hula, the Editor of the Around The Rings – american analytics agency, saying that Sochi’s bid, unlike Salzburg’s and PyeongChang’s bids, got a lot stronger due to better lobby on international level.

Past October’s Power Ranking by ATR looked like this:
1. Salzburg (87)
2. PyeongChang (76) tie
2. Sochi (76) tie

I wonder if they’ll post new ranking after examining the Bid Books, or they’ll wait for Evaluation Commission to tour the candidate cities…

By the way, here is Power Index their October ranking was based on:

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Sochi 2014 Bid Books are available online in PDF format at sochi2014.com!

The base for Sochi Olympic Games theme will be ancient Greek myth about Prometheus – the Titan who took fire from the gods of Olympus and give it to mortals for their use, for this he was chained to Mount Fischt near Sochi. This became know after IOC allowed the three candidate cities to make their Olympic plans public.

In Wikipedia, and many other sources, you’ll read that Prometheus was chained to Mount Caucasus, but where is this mountain today? Why do they think it is Fischt Mountain, near Sochi? Here is what I found on the internet: Continue reading →