Organizing committee of the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games of 2014 in Sochi has launched official team blog at blogs.sochi2014.ru … but it’s only in Russian, at least for now.

Looking at the dates it appears they’ve been giving it a thought since May, but revived the idea only now, in September. The announcement was posted yesterday.

The posting is for the officials only – there already are a few posts about marketing, environments, finance, etc. But you can comment, and the best thing is they do reply! You have to register, though, or use one of your existing OpenID accounts (if you’re registered at Google, Facebook, Yahoo (must enable first, though) – you have one).

I’m glad they finally did this, and hope they don’t run out of steam blogging and responding when more people start visiting.

Official Sochi2014 Team blog: http://blogs.sochi2014.ru/

Oh, and it runs on WordPress too! :-)

Russia’s Sberbank, which was earlier selected as an official partner of Olympics in Sochi, is holding public competition for the best Sochi 2014 credit card design. The main prize: a trip to Vancouver in February 2010

The official website for the competition is sochi-card.ru

Unfortunately for most of the visitors of this blog the competition is open to Russian citizens only. If you are eligible you can read rules of participation (in Russian) here. But, luckily for those who have any skills, you’ve got a pretty good chance, ’cause most of the designs submeted by now look more like kindergarten drawings.

Here are a few of the ones I personally liked. You can see them all in the official gallery.

Do you like any of those designs?

75 000 construction workers will be working on Olympic projects in 2010-2011 — this is the estimate from Dmitry Kozak, Vice Prime-Minister of Russia responsible for overseeing Olympics preparations. RIA Novosti also quotes him saying that there are no plans to specifically involve migrant workers, all work places should be filled via competitive transparent tenders.

According to him there are only 299 foreign workers are currently working on Olympic construction projects out of around 11 000 people working there today.

About a week ago domain name Sochi.ru – which hosted popular city portal with forums, classifieds, events calendar, news, etc. – was transferred to Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014”.

Why and how this happened is a bit of a mystery. Originally, on August 19, an announcement was posted on the website that the popular portal will move to a new domain – Sochi.com, and included statement that “by the order of the Government of the Russian Federation administration of domain name Sochi.ru goes over to the Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014″”… but later that sentence was removed from the announcement.

Neither Organizing Committee nor previous owner commented this to the media. Most news agencies quoted head of PR of the Ru-Center, .RU’s official domain names registration center, mentioning the “Olympic Law”, which basically makes anything with Sochi Olympics logo and other Olympics-related symbols (and that includes domain names) property of the Organizing Committee. However, not only that makes no sense, since Sochi.com is not much different from Sochi.ru in this respect, but also only combinations of “Sochi” and “2014” fall under that law — this was discussed and explained at the time when this law came into effect.

But this is a done deal – WHOIS info already shows “Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014″” as Sochi.ru’s registrant, and the copy of the original portal already spinning at the Sochi.com. According to the original announcement, anyone who has @sochi.ru email address and all third level domains will exist until the end of this year.

I wonder what project will spin at this address next.

Since I’m still not finding much time to write more about Sochi, here are some short news that have been happening recently:

Financial crisis and Sochi investment projects

Amid the global financial crisis and the news that many investors are wrapping up their big real estate projects all around Russia and around World, not a single investor withdrew from the already concrete Olympic projects in Sochi – which is good news. However, new investors are not so quick to jump in anymore, so, the promised Government’s financial guarantees will come handy after all, I guess.

Georgia changes it’s mind

Georgia, which was one of the first to congratulate Russia on winning the Olympics bid, and who’s president said he supported Sochi bid from the beginning.. Same Georgia which then started a war on the first day of the Olympics in Beijing – something that western media was quick to call “Russian propaganda”, but more recently admitted it was Georgia who started it, and finally even Georgian president admitted giving the order to attack South Ossetia after high ranking Georgian official publicly said the same thing… That same Georgia few days ago tried to appeal to IOC to move Olympics from Sochi to another city – the move that IOC has quickly dismissed.

I think now Georgian or Abkhazian question in Sochi Olympics formula is finally closed forever: Georgia attacked Abkhazia (along with Ossetia) → Georgia lost → Russia officially recognized Abkhazia’s independence, which means Abkhazia can help with constructions and will benefit from increased tourism flow to the region → Russian troops will anchor for now in Abkhazia to ensure the region’s stability → IOC acknowledges Sochi is a safe city for the Olympics, the World class event – the cycle is complete for the next decade.

Explosions investigation

Three persons were detained in connection with explosions in Sochi that occurred earlier this year. No details yet, though.

Construction of 17 Olympic projects is already underway, another 100 projects are in the engineering phase, and around 60 more Olympics-related projects are applying for expert evaluation.

This info is from RIA Novosti. They also have some recent photos from constructions sites. Here a few of ’em:

Olympic venues constructions start moves closer to the reality as Sochi administration and the residents of the Imeritinskaya Valley, where the Sochi 2014 Olympic Park will be located, reached compromise on where the residents will be relocated.

Russia offered exceptionally compact plan, where all the competition venues would be within 30 miles of each other. It will consist of two parts: mountain region, hosting sliding and skiing events, and sea-side region, where ice venues will be located. The sea-side region will be located in the Imeritinskaya Valley of the Adler district. There were several concerns with this location, the biggest one being a question of what to do with the people who live there now. Government has promised to make everyone happy, but with realty prices in Sochi skyrocketing after the successful Olympic bid, residents of “Imeritinka” (as locals call Imeritinskaya Valley) did not trust government to be good to its word. Most recent conflict was in the end of July, when locals did not allow city’s officials to their territory to measure their land.

But it appears that long fought battle is over. Earlier Sochi administration officials said that comromise has been reached, and not a single person will be relocated from the areas of Olympic construction without having their social issues taken care of first. And today Alexander Tkachev, governor of Krasnodarski Krai, signed first nine of 138 orders to take over real estate properties for the Olympic construction.

What is the deal

The details of the deal are as follows: residents will be able to choose between a new house in the eastern Imeritinskaya Valley build by the city, and a residence paid for by administration. For those who will choose to live in eastern part of Imeritinskaya Valley, the administration is allocating 66 hectares for the real estate properties where brand new houses will be built, as well as all necessary infrastructures. In addition to this, new cultural-historical center will be established to preserve traditions of the Old Believers community who live in Imeritinka as well.

It sounds like a really good deal. Especially considering that some parts of the Imeritinka has little to none of basic infrastructure.

First nine household will be relocated until the end of this year, while the rest of them during next 1,5-2 years span.

Olympstroy, state corporation responsible for coordination of the Olympic construction in Sochi, could not attract investors for some of the Olympic venues. The tender’s deadline was August 8, but there were no proposals for four projects, including the ice arenas.

The Olympstroys’ tender projects are tandems of Olympic venue plus hotel(s). Lenta.ru quoting Pokrov Invetment Group’s President saying that pay-off period for hotels can be from eighth years and more, while for the sports venues from 12 years to never. By his calculations sport venue + hotel tandem could take more than 20 years to pay-off.

Meanwhile, officials are not surprised about the outcome. The press secretary of the Ministry of Regional Development said that ice arenas in many countries are not paying off and are built on governments’ funds. However, the administration had to try to find private funds for these venues.

Now there will be separate tenders for the hotels, while Olympstroy will finance the venue constructions, and run separate tenders for prime contractors for the venues construction.

Information from Lenta.ru and Kommersant.ru

Elena Vesnina (Елена Веснина)

Tennis [beijing2008, wiki]
Event: Women’s Doubles

Victoria Gurova (Виктория Гурова)

Athletics [beijing]
Event: Women’s Triple Jump

Vladimir Karpets (Владимир Карпец)

Cycling Road [beijing, wiki]
Events: Men’s Individual Time Trial, Men’s Road Race

* sochi2014.com reports he’s Sochi native, but everywhere else I look – he’s from St.-Petersburg. Important thing he’s from Russia :-)

Tatiana Bazyuk (Татьяна Базюк)

Sailing [beijing]
Event: RS:X Women

Best of luck to you guys!!

Meanwhile, Russia got it’s first medal — silver in shooting by Lioubov Galkina! Yay!!

* Sochi mayor Viktor Kolodyazhny resigns to become head of «Olympstroy» corporation owned by state which will control all Olympic related construction in Sochi, and, of course, the money flow. You can read more on this in The Moscow Times. The acting mayor for now will be Vladimir Afanasenkov — Vice Governor of Krasnodarsky Krai. He too was previously involved in Sochi’s Olympic bid.

* Russia launches Olympic brand protection campaign:

“Sochi 2014 Organising Committee and Russian authorities today began the first ever mass intellectual property protection campaign to safeguard the Olympic brand in Russia.

«Professional partnership London – Sochi» program took its start in the end of January in Sochi. The program provides for delegation exchanges between colleges and education establishments.

On January 22, professors from three London universities met with pedagogues from the «Black Sea humanitarian academy». During their week-long visit, guests from UK will have specialised seminar on teaching medical English, and will share their experience in organizing short term language courses for hotels’ personnel.

The point of this visit was to establish contacts and find common interests of two Olympic capitals in experience exchange of preparing staff for the Olympic Games. Educational consulting firm from London also plans to monitor knowledge level of English language among Sochi residents, students, and hotels’ personnel. Meanwhile city administration has set difficult goal for city’s teachers – to teach all residents at least one foreign language! Currently, out of 400 000+ residents only 10% know foreign languages in adequate level.

Sochi teachers will visit London in April, after which a document will be signed between two cities on educational tourism.

The Organizing Committee for the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games of 2014 in Sochi has officially been formed today. It will be responsible for the preparation and organization of the Olympic Games, and will report to the International Olympic Committee.

As was expected, Dmitry Chernyshenko is appointed chief executive officer of the organizing committee, and the Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov is appointed head of supervisory board.

The Organizing Committee will be ensuring that Read the rest of this entry »

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that laws pertaining to the future winter Olympic Games in Sochi must be passed before the end of 2007.

“One of the primary tasks is to devise proper regulations. The necessary Olympic laws must be passed before the end of this year,” Putin said at a session of the Presidential Council for Physical Education, Sports and preparations for the Olympic Games on Tuesday.

The Russian government and the presidential administration must include Sochi and Krasnodar representatives in the working group preparing these laws “so that all interests of the residents of these areas are taken into account,” Putin said.

Source: Interfax

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 »

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.