Olympics in Sochi: Idea fixe, or Another PR campaign Why does Sochi need the Winter Olympics?

On July 26, at the Russian Olympic Meeting, a unanimous decision was made to nominate Sochi for the right to host the XXII Winter Olympic Games in 2014. The official application to the IOC was sent on July 27. The delegates agreed with extraordinary ease that investing 6 billion dollars in the development of a seaside resort city, the budget of which is 6 billion rubles, is a piece of cake.

Once again, sports officials are trying to convince the Russian population of how important it is for us to host the Olympic Games. The prestige of the country, the development of the resort business, the revival of the former glory of domestic sports... They talk and talk, and the longer they talk, the more they convince themselves that we cannot live without the Olympics.

Moscow's initially planned failure in the fight for the 2012 Olympics did not bother anyone. And who could he confuse if all the officials involved in this idea knew in advance that the Russian capital would lose. A pompous presentation, reading English words from a piece of paper by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, an appeal without a piece of paper, but all in the same bad English of the country's President Vladimir Putin - all this is a beautiful wrapper of poorly made candy. IOC officials, having carefully examined Moscow's application, concluded that the Russian capital cannot be trusted to host the Olympics.

This is despite the fact that Moscow, unlike other competitors, actually has a lot of sports facilities that, with the right approach, can be prepared for the Games in a short time. This is despite the fact that our capital had an original “Olympic River” plan, which, if successfully implemented, guaranteed the holding of the best Olympics in history. This is despite the fact that Moscow received full state support and financial guarantees. So, with all this, the Moscow-2012 bid committee did not answer the main question - what, when and with what money will be built.

Submitting an application to the International Olympic Committee (until July 28, 2005) - 159 thousand dollars.
Preparation of the initial IOC questionnaire (before February 1, 2006) - up to 50 thousand dollars.
Preparation of the application book by February 10, 2007 (in case of reaching the second round on June 21-23, 2006) - about 500 thousand dollars.
Reception of the IOC evaluation commission in February-March 2007 and conducting an advertising campaign in accordance with the IOC code of ethics (before the session of the International Olympic Committee in Guatemala in July 2007) - 10-20 million dollars.
Preparations for the Olympics in case of victory in the elections - up to 6 billion dollars.

Now Sochi is entering the fight for the Olympics - not the summer, but the winter - for the third time in its history. It enters with one, and as it seems to everyone involved in putting forward an application, an undeniable advantage - natural conditions. According to the head of the city administration, Viktor Kolodyazhny, it is impossible to imagine a better place for the Winter Olympics than Sochi. “The positive decision of the Olympic Assembly on the nomination of Sochi will give a new impetus to the development of our city,” he noted. “Sochi has a developed infrastructure, and today it is ready to receive 400 thousand guests.”

If this were really the case, then in 1994, when the question of the location of the 2002 Winter Olympics was being decided, IOC officials, without hesitation, would have given the Games to our resort city, and not to the ordinary American Salt Lake City, but in 1998 they would have decided to hold the 2006 Olympics in Russia, and not in Italian Turin. But, having looked on site at the mountain ranges, beautiful views, waterfalls and making sure that there was no winter in Sochi, the IOC decided differently.

Now, taking into account those adventurous projects, a new plan for the location of sports facilities has been developed. The Olympic village should be located in the Adler district of Sochi, in close proximity to the airport. The road to all objects from the village will take no more than 15-20 minutes.

Sochi (Russia), Almaty (Kazakhstan), Bakuriani and Borjomi (Georgia), Tromsø (Norway), Annessy (France), Pyeong Chang (Korea), Salzburg (Austria), Sofia (Bulgaria), Jaca (Spain).

“The main stadium will be built in Adler, where competitions in figure skating, hockey, speed skating, and curling will be held,” said Deputy Head of Sochi Alexander Udalov. “Alpine skiing and flat slopes will be located in Krasnaya Polyana. That is, all competitions in alpine skiing and biathlon ", skiing, as well as bobsleigh and ski jumping will take place in one place. This is what makes our plan unique."

Adler and Krasnaya Polyana will be connected by a high-speed tunnel, the journey along which will take less than half an hour. This tunnel is almost completed. Its construction took five years, and it will begin functioning in August. At the Olympic meeting, they spoke only about the very fact of connecting Sochi and Krasnaya Polyana by a tunnel, and, as always, they kept silent about the details.

“If Sochi becomes the capital of the 2014 Olympic Games, then this Olympics will become the most convenient for both athletes, coaches and fans,” noted Alexander Pochinok, Deputy Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Southern Federal District. “Firstly, there are no problems here with snow. Secondly, the unique location of the facilities allows us to hold competitions in many sports together. There will be no problems with the further use of the facilities - the Olympic village will become an excellent hotel complex, and our athletes will be able to train and hold training camps on the sports tracks."

The main idea of the Sochi application is not to hold competitions in one place, but to combine summer and winter recreation. There is not a single facility in Sochi that is more or less suitable for hosting the largest sports tournament of our time. And it is unclear what exactly the application committee of the IOC Evaluation Commission will show if it comes to such a visit. Perhaps, after looking at the master plan for the development of the mountain village of Krasnaya Polyana, Olympic officials will suddenly soften and give Sochi the 2014 Games.

According to this plan, it is planned to create a mountain-sea tourist complex capable of receiving up to 3 million people a year. The total cost of the project, whose investors are Gazprom, Interros, RAO UES of Russia and the Yumaco group of companies, ranges from 1 to 1.5 billion dollars. It is assumed that the territory of the resort (Mountain and Sea Complex "Krasnaya Polyana") will be expanded from the mountains to the seashore.

The village of Krasnaya Polyana itself is located 43 kilometers from the seashore, and the mountain-sea complex of the same name with the village now includes a large area of land from the beaches in the Lower Imeretinskaya Lowland (this is the southern outskirts of Sochi, directly adjacent to the border with Abkhazia) to the mountains, located already beyond Krasnaya Polyana - a total of over 520 square kilometers. The entire resort will be divided into three parts - seaside, foothill and mountain.

In the seaside part of the complex, hotels and boarding houses with the necessary infrastructure will be built, including outdoor and indoor water parks with swimming pools with heated sea water. In the foothills there will be a golf club, a hippodrome, balneological clinics in which mineral waters and mud from nearby deposits will be used, and a universal entertainment and entertainment center will be built here. As for the mountainous part, its purpose has been known for a long time - a ski resort with all the attributes: slopes for skiers and snowboarders, cable cars, hotels, restaurants. At the same time, at the Olympic meeting, the head of Interros, Vladimir Potanin, was skeptical about the implementation of this project in the near future.

The plan raises serious concerns among environmental organizations, since 84 percent of the complex's territory is the land of the Sochi National Park, which is a world natural value. With a large influx of tourists, environmentalists believe, nature will inevitably begin to degrade. This alone is not worth any Olympics.

But even if we manage to raise money for the Games, prepare a plan for the construction of facilities thought out to the smallest detail, tell the IOC about the pricing advertising policy, and coordinate the holding of the Olympics with environmentalists, another question arises - what to do with the sports facilities that will be left as a legacy? The answer seems to be obvious - use it for its intended purpose. But this is only at first glance. After all, the operation of large-scale facilities will be so expensive that it will be more profitable for athletes to train abroad. Artificial ice alone, for example, must always be maintained in a certain condition, and who will pay for this?

Sochi risks turning into Barcelona, which received an entire sports city in 1992, where life is currently barely glimmering. Plus, it is unlikely that the organizers will be able to earn enough money from the sale of tickets - we are not in Germany, where even the usual stages of the World Cup in ski jumping or biathlon attract 40-60 thousand people. It must also be said that Sochi’s application has nothing to do with the development of winter sports in Russia. But at the last Olympics the results of our athletes are getting worse and worse! Only 5 gold medals in Salt Lake City are clear proof of this. It is possible that there will be an even louder failure in Turin, and salvation from shame, as always, will be found in figure skaters and biathletes. Winter sports in Russia are not only not developing, but are falling apart, and some of the successes of the same bobsledders and lugers were forged abroad.

So maybe spend $6 billion on something more useful? Oh yes, who will listen - for officials the main thing is not victory, but participation. They always follow the Olympic principles very strictly.

Andrey Sentsov