The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially the XXII Olympic Winter Games, or the 22nd Winter Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event being held in Sochi. Officially scheduled for 7 February through 23 February 2014, opening rounds in figure skating, skiing, and snowboard competitions were held on the eve of the Opening Ceremony, 6 February 2014. Both the Olympics and 2014 Winter Paralympics are being organized by the Sochi Organizing Committee (SOC). The Sochi Olympics are the first Olympics in the Russian Federation since the breakup of the USSR in 1991. The USSR was the host nation for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. 98 events in 15 winter sport disciplines will be held throughout the Games. A number of new competitions—a total of twelve accounting for gender—will be held during the Games, including biathlon mixed relay, women’s ski jumping, mixed-team figure skating, mixed-team luge, half-pipe skiing, ski and snowboard slopestyle, and snowboard parallel slalom. The events will be held around two clusters of new venues; an Olympic Park was constructed in Sochi’s Imeretinsky Valley on the coast of the Black Sea, with Fisht Olympic Stadium and the Games’ indoor venues located within walking distance, and snow events will be held in the resort settlement of Krasnaya Polyana.
In preparation for the games, organizers focused on modernizing the telecommunications, electric power, and transportation infrastructures of the region. While originally budgeted at US$12 billion, various factors caused the budget to expand to over US$51 billion, surpassing the estimated $44 billion cost of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing as the most expensive Olympics in history. Today, on the opening day of the games, not all the measures have become finished on time, some will not be finished even to the end of the games or were partially deleted entirely from the original plan. This is a shame on the one hand, on the other hand, the 2018 FIFA World Cup will take place in Sochi, so that someone has perhaps decided to still leave room for improvements during the time between the games and the World Cup, to keep up the tension for visitors and spectators of the sporting events.
Sochi Olympic Park (Coastal Cluster)
The Sochi Olympic Park was built by the Black Sea coast in the Imeretin Valley, about 4 km (2.5 miles) from Russia’s border with Georgia. The venues are clustered around a central water basin on which the Medals Plaza is built, allowing all indoor venues to be within walking distance. The new venues include:
