Translated material
Olympstroy without quotes
The IOC inspection saw real construction in Sochi for the first time
Over the past week, the Russian resort of Sochi, where unprecedented-scale work has finally begun to prepare the city for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, was inspected by specialists from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). First, the situation was studied and assessed by IOC experts, then by the IOC Sochi 2014 coordination commission, headed by the famous alpine skier, Olympic champion Jean-Claude Killy and the executive director of the committee, Gilbert Felli. The main concerns so far are the situation with the construction of hotels to accommodate Olympic guests.This was the third inspection of Sochi conducted by IOC specialists. Like the previous two, it was held closed to the press. Killy and Felli spoke with journalists only at the final press conference, held in one of the hotels in the village of Krasnaya Polyana. Describing what they saw in the city, Jean-Claude Killy and Gilbert Felli again spoke about significant progress in preparing the resort for the Games and that they were leaving home completely satisfied, without any doubt: in the four years remaining before the Olympics, Sochi everything will be built.
But if in May last year IOC specialists looked at fenced areas with pegs driven into the ground at the resort, now for the first time they saw truly large-scale construction projects, which together, according to Mr. Killy, are the largest construction projects in Europe.
As you know, Sochi still has neither sports facilities nor infrastructure corresponding to the Olympic level. Almost everything that is necessary for the successful holding of the Games is created from scratch in this city. In total, the organizers of the Sochi Olympics - and among them the Russian federal authorities, the Olimpstroy state corporation, the administration of the Krasnodar region and the city of Sochi and the Sochi-2014 organizing committee - need to build 235 objects of transport infrastructure, energy, water supply and sewerage, hotel facilities and etc. However, only 13 objects will be directly related to sports.
According to the latest updated data provided to Vremya Novostey by the Sochi-2014 organizing committee, as of April 19, 2010, technical documentation for 67 objects can be considered ready. Construction work is already underway at 43 sites on this list. The rest will begin construction soon. In the second half of 2010, construction in Sochi will reach its peak. It will last until the end of 2012. At this time, all objects in the city will be built simultaneously. The organizers of the 2014 Olympics call this period the most difficult for the resort, calling on local residents to be understanding of the difficulties in the form of lines of trucks and other construction equipment, traffic jams, pits, dirt, clouds of cement dust... Sochi residents are asked to be patient, promising them that in 2014 the city will turn into a resort that meets the highest world standards.
The Sochi Olympic project is being implemented in three clusters - coastal, mountain and urban.
In the coastal cluster, in the Lower Imeretinskaya Lowland, located in the Adler region on the southern outskirts of the resort, an Olympic Park is being built, on the territory of which there will be ice palaces for competitions in ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating, short track speed skating and curling. A huge stadium for 40 thousand spectators will also be built here, where the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games will take place. An Olympic village, a press center, and hotels will be built in the same complex.
The mountain cluster is the vicinity of the village of Krasnaya Polyana, located 50 km from the Lower Imereti Lowland. Tracks for alpine skiing and freestyle skiing competitions, a park for snowboarding competitions, and a ski stadium for cross-country skiing and biathlon competitions are already being built there. Springboards for ski jumping competitions and a bobsleigh and luge track will also be built there. All this with the appropriate infrastructure: roads and cable cars, its own mountain Olympic village, press center, hotels, restaurants.
City cluster is the territory of the city of Sochi, falling within a 50-kilometer radius from the coastal and mountain cluster. Here, transport and engineering infrastructure facilities (roads and junctions, water supply, sewerage and electrical networks) are urgently built and reconstructed, and residential buildings are repaired.
This time, the IOC inspectors, according to them, were most impressed by the round-the-clock construction of a large ice hockey arena for 12 thousand spectators (this facility is now very similar to the Roman Colosseum: two floors of the building are already ready in concrete, and it is clearly visible where there will be stands and an oval area), as well as a palace for figure skating and short track competitions in the coastal cluster. By the way, after the Games this palace, also designed for 12 thousand spectators, will be dismantled and transported to another city in Russia. Therefore, it is built from prefabricated metal structures according to a unique design. However, if we talk about the projects of the Sochi Olympic buildings, they can all be called unique, and this is considered one of the advantages of Sochi: construction from scratch, as the organizers of the 2014 Olympics have repeatedly emphasized, allows the construction of the most modern facilities.
IOC inspectors were also very impressed by the construction of a combined road and railway in the Mzymta River valley. During the Games, this route is expected to provide very fast transportation of spectators and competitors from the coastal cluster to the mountain cluster and back. The length of the route is about 50 km. Almost all of it will consist of complex engineering structures - tunnels, bridges and overpasses, and parallel ones: one part for trains, the second for cars. This is the most complex and expensive project of the Sochi Games: its preliminary estimated cost is 230 billion rubles. The road is being constructed by JSC Russian Railways.
By the way, the construction of a combined road and railway from the coastal cluster to the mountain cluster impressed not only IOC inspectors. Journalists who drove along the Mzymta valley from Adler to Krasnaya Polyana were also shocked. Throughout the valley, right in the river and along its banks, there are hundreds of bulldozers, excavators, trucks, cranes and other mechanisms. There are thousands of workers on construction sites. In many places, the supports of overpasses rise above the river, and in some places there are already ceilings on the supports. Tunnels are made in the slopes of the mountains near the river. Stacks of thousands of felled tree trunks, mountains of shoveled earth and river pebbles. Of the previously seen beauties of the valley, which is part of the protected areas of the Sochi National Park, not a trace remains of the virgin landscapes.
It is no coincidence that at a press conference, Jean-Claude Killy and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who was accompanying the leaders of the IOC commission, who is in charge of the Olympic construction in the federal government, were asked whether during this inspection the problems of ensuring the environmental safety of work in Sochi, in particular during the construction of a combined highway and railway in the Mzymta valley?
As Mr. Kozak explained, a program of environmental support and monitoring of work to prepare the city for the Games is currently being implemented in Sochi. A number of measures have been taken to ensure strict environmental controls. During the visit of IOC experts, he said, significant progress was noted in solving environmental problems, primarily during the construction of a combined road and railway. “I agree with this assessment,” said Dmitry Kozak. “I know how much effort JSC Russian Railways is making to implement a whole range of compensation measures and minimize damage to nature.”
Mr. Killy's response was not so encouraging. He said that some time ago the IOC received a report on the environmental situation in Sochi in connection with the Olympic construction, made by a group of specialists working under the UN environmental protection program. According to him, "this is a critical report, but nevertheless full of optimism." “What you see in this valley now is perhaps not the most pleasant sight,” continued Jean-Claude Killy. “But it is very possible that if everything is carried out correctly, in accordance with the highest criteria, this valley will become more beautiful in the future than it was in the past...”
Recently, environmentalists expressed their concerns that not everything in the Mzymta River valley is being done correctly. In particular, the director of the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, Igor Chestin, said that the organization he leads is withdrawing from environmental support for the Olympic construction in Sochi, since the recommendations of environmentalists are not being followed by the builders. “Despite the creation of working groups and a coordinating council, which, together with environmentalists, included representatives of the state corporation Olimpstroy and contractors, all our proposals for the construction of Olympic facilities are not being implemented, although they previously received approval,” Mr. Chestin was indignant.
According to him, significant harm to nature is caused not only in the Mzymta valley, but also in the Lower Imeretinsk lowland, where the Olympic Park is being built. There, in order to compensate for the damage to nature, ecologists proposed creating a natural reserve on the territory of which migratory birds could stop to rest. They always used this lowland as a stopover during their seasonal migrations. In the reserve it would be possible to preserve unique and endemic vegetation listed in the Red Book of Russia. But this idea, according to Mr. Chastin, actually failed.
Interestingly, just on the eve of the inspection of Sochi by the IOC commission in the city, the results of analyzes of water samples taken by ecologists in different places of the Mzymta River were made public. The maximum permissible values for water pollution with petroleum products have been exceeded several times. In addition, high concentrations of arsenic were found in the water, which, as environmentalists are convinced, is a direct consequence of large-scale construction: underground deposits of ores containing harmful and even toxic substances were discovered. The Sochi public is beginning to express concern about this: the main Sochi water intakes are located on the Mzymta, and it is this river that supplies drinking water to more than half of the resort.
At a press conference by the heads of the IOC Coordination Commission and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, journalists asked how the Games in Sochi would be protected from the terrorist threat. It is clear that this issue was caused by the recent explosions in the Moscow metro. Mr. Kozak said that a security concept for the 2014 Olympics has been developed, a corresponding action plan has been prepared and it is already being implemented. In addition, a decree of the President of the Russian Federation has been prepared, providing for specific measures and restrictions, the purpose of which is to ensure security and protection of public order directly during the Olympics in Sochi. In the near future, according to Mr. Kozak, this decree will be signed. “We will be able to reliably protect the Sochi Games from any criminal attacks, including the terrorist threat,” said Dmitry Kozak.
In turn, Mr. Killy said that the IOC’s position on ensuring the security of the Olympic Games is “very simple” - “we trust the authorities of a particular country.” But at the same time, IOC experts are “constantly monitoring the situation.”
Last week, a regular meeting of the public council to prepare the city for the Olympics was held in Sochi, which was devoted to security issues. It also talked a lot about protection from the terrorist threat, but council members were more concerned about another problem: now in Sochi there are about 16 thousand workers working on Olympic construction sites who came to the resort from other cities of Russia and from the CIS countries. By the end of the year, the number of visiting construction workers is expected to increase to 50 thousand. And this, according to the chairman of the public council, General Director of ITAR-TASS Vitaly Ignatenko, could become the cause of numerous conflict situations between Sochi residents and visiting workers. After all, even now, according to the head of the administration of the Central District of Sochi, Ivan Savin, who emotionally spoke at a meeting of the council, living in a private house in Adler, in close proximity to the Olympic construction sites, “groups of hungry workers are walking around the city, who, any minute, will climb over the fence and they will steal the chicken...”
These words were confirmed by information that was later shared with journalists by the head of the Sochi-2014 department created under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Police Major General Leonid Gerbanovsky: an increase in crime was recorded in the Adler district of Sochi, and it is associated with the arrival in the city for the Olympic construction sites a large number of workers.
At the press conference of the leaders of the IOC Coordination Commission, this time concerns were also voiced. Jean-Claude Killy very carefully and delicately expressed some concern that it is still not clear in Sochi where and how thousands of participants and guests of the Olympics will be accommodated. In total, the resort should provide 42 thousand hotel beds for the Games, not counting beds in the Olympic villages in the coastal and mountain cluster. But hotel construction projects have not yet been implemented. It is known that there are no investors willing to invest in this construction. The appeal of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to the heads of the CIS states, inviting them to build a hotel from each country in the Sochi Olympic Park, also did not receive a response. But on this issue too, Mr. Killy remains an optimist. He expressed confidence that the problem will be resolved by the next inspection trip of the IOC Coordination Commission to Sochi, which is scheduled for October. Now, in accordance with IOC regulations, the capital of the 2014 Olympics will be inspected twice a year.