Host City well prepared to host its first Olympics
Sochi (pps) On February 7, 2013, it will be exactly one year until the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. The Black Sea resort is already well prepared - in accordance with the official motto “Gateway to the Future”. With a budget of 37 billion Euros for the 2014 Olympic Games Russia shall create a gateway into the future, bringing a sustainable change to the sports, social, ecological as well as economic development. “These Winter Games,” said the head of the Organizing Committee, Dmitry Chernyshenko, will “change the entire region”.
Especially the venue of the nine Olympic events in luge (women’s singles, men’s singles, doubles and, for the first time, the Team Relay event), bobsleigh (two-man, four-man and women’s bobsleigh) and skeleton (women’s and men’s skeleton), the “Sliding Center Sanki”, is very well prepared even though Olympic test runs have not yet been carried out.
“I like the track very much,” said Olympic Champion Tatjana Huefner of Germany after the International Training Week in November 2012 when the lugers had their first “rendezvous” with the new track. Huefner added: “It’s a fine but difficult track. Interesting and - above all - unique.” But one year ahead of the Olympic Games the last “tests” will be carried out: the final of the Viessmann Luge World Cup series 2012/13 is scheduled to take place at the “Sliding Center Sanki” on February 23-24, 2013. By the way - “Sanki” is the Russian word for “sled”.
A total of 98 gold medals will be awarded at the Olympic Winter Games next year, 12 medals more than in Vancouver (Canada) in 2010. The spectators of the Russian TV station “Pervy Kanal” decided on three animals as the official mascot: a leopard (28 percent of votes), a polar bear (18 percent) and a rabbit (16 percent).
With Sochi, a city with about 330,000 inhabitants situated on the “Russian Riviera” along the Black Sea coast, Russia - the largest country in the world - will host its second Olympic Games after the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. The 2014 Games will be the first Winter Games in a subtropical climate.
