2014 Winter Olympics


The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXII Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Sochi 2014, were an international winter multi-sport event that was held from 7 to 23 February 2014 in Sochi, Russia. Opening rounds in certain events were held on 6 February 2014, the day before the opening ceremony.
These were the first Olympic Games under the International Olympic Committee presidency of Thomas Bach. Both the Olympics and Paralympics were organised by the Sochi Organizing Committee. Sochi was selected as the host city on 5 July 2007, during the 119th IOC Session held in Guatemala City. It was the first Olympics to be held in a CIS state and former Warsaw Pact state after the Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic previously hosted the Summer Olympics in 1980.
A record ninety-eight events in fifteen winter sport disciplines were held during the Games. A number of new competitions—a total of twelve accounting for gender—were 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 were held around two clusters of new venues: an Olympic Park 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 in the resort settlement of Krasnaya Polyana.
The 2014 Winter Olympics were the most expensive Games in the history of the Olympics. While originally budgeted at US$12 billion, major cost overruns caused this figure to expand to US$51 billion, more than three times the cost of the 2012 London Olympics and even surpassing the estimated cost of US$44 billion for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The 2014 Games achieved a record broadcast audience of 2.1 billion people worldwide.
In 2016, an independent report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency confirmed allegations that the Russian Olympic team had been involved in a state-sponsored doping program, active from at least late 2011 through August 2015. The program was active during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and athletes had benefited from the cover-up. The IOC stripped thirteen medals from Russian athletes in 2017, but nine were reinstated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. In December 2017, the IOC voted to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee, with an option for whitelisted athletes to compete independently during the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Bidding process

Sochi was elected on 4 July 2007 during the 119th International Olympic Committee session held in Guatemala City, Guatemala, defeating bids from Salzburg, Austria; and Pyeongchang, South Korea. This is the first time that the Russian Federation has hosted the Winter Olympics. The Soviet Union was the host of the 1980 Summer Olympics held in and around Moscow.

Cost and financing

As of October 2013, the estimated combined cost of the 2014 Winter Olympics had topped US$51 billion. This amount included the cost for Olympic games themselves and cost of Sochi infrastructural projects. This total is over four times the initial budget of $12 billion, and made the Sochi games the most expensive Olympics in history, exceeding the estimated $44 billion cost of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, which hosted 3 times as many events. Dmitry Kozak was the main overseer for the events in Sochi.
In its final budget published in June 2014, Olimpstroy—the state corporation that oversaw the Sochi Olympics development—reported the total allocated funds for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics of 1,524 billion rubles. However, only about a fifth of that budget was directly related to the Olympic games, while the rest went into urban and regional regeneration and the conversion of the Sochi region into an all-year round sea and alpine resort. The breakdown table below is based on a report that has analysed the distribution of Olimpstroy's $49.5 billion budget. Estimates also suggest that additional unrecoverable operational costs could have added another $3 billion.

The breakdown of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics costs

Venues

With an average February temperature of and a humid subtropical climate, Sochi is the warmest city to host a Winter Olympic Games. Sochi 2014 is the 12th straight Olympics to outlaw smoking; all Sochi venues, Olympic Park bars and restaurants and public areas were smoke-free during the Games. It is also the first time that an Olympic Park has been built for hosting winter games.

Sochi Olympic Park (Coastal Cluster)

The Sochi Olympic Park was built by the Black Sea coast in the Imeretinsky Valley, about 4 km from Russia's border with Abkhazia/Georgia. The venues were clustered around a central water basin on which the Medals Plaza is built, allowing all indoor venues to be within walking distance. It also features "The Waters of the Olympic Park", a choreographed fountain which served as the backdrop in the medals awards and the opening and closing ceremonies of the event. The new venues include:
A street circuit known as the Sochi Autodrom was constructed in and around Olympic Park. Its primary use is to host the Formula One Russian Grand Prix, which held its inaugural edition in October 2014.
In January 2015, work began on adapting Fisht Olympic Stadium into an open-air football stadium to host matches during the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
A new ice hockey team in the Kontinental Hockey League, HC Sochi Leopards, now plays in Bolshoy Arena.

Marketing

Construction

The Olympic infrastructure was constructed according to a Federal Target Program. In June 2009, the Games' organisers reported they were one year ahead in building the main Olympic facilities as compared to recent Olympic Games. In November 2011, IOC President Jacques Rogge was in Sochi and concluded that the city had made significant progress since he last visited eighteen months earlier.

Telecommunications

According to the FTP, US$580 million would be spent on construction and modernisation of telecommunications in the region. Avaya was named by the Sochi Organizing Committee as the official supplier of telecommunications equipment. Avaya provided the data network equipment, including switches, routers, security, telephones and contact-centre systems. It provided engineers and technicians to design and test the systems, and worked with other technology partners to provide athletes, dignitaries and fans information about the Games.
The 2014 Olympics is the first "fabric-enabled" Games using Shortest Path Bridging technology. The network is capable of handling up to 54 Tbit/s of traffic.
Infrastructure built for the games included:
  • A network of TETRA mobile radio communications for 100 user groups ;
  • of fibre-optic cables along the Anapa-Dzhubga-Sochi highways and Dzhubga–Krasnodar branch;
  • Digital broadcasting infrastructure, including radio and television broadcasting stations with coverage from Grushevaya Polyana to Sochi and Anapa cities. The project also included construction of infocommunications centre for broadcasting abroad via three HDTV satellites.
During the Games, the core networks of Rostelecom and Transtelekom were used.
In January 2012, the newest equipment for the television coverage of the Games arrived in the port of Adler. Prepared specifically for the Games, a team of regional specialists and the latest technology provide a qualitatively new level of television production in the region.
The fibre-optic channel links Sochi between Adler and Krasnaya Polyana. The channel enables videoconferencing and news reporting from the Olympics.
In November 2013, it was reported that the fibre-optic cable that was built by the Federal Communications Agency, Rossvyaz, had no operator. With Rostelecom and Megafon both refusing to operate it, the line was transferred to the ownership of the state enterprise Center for Monitoring & Development of Infocommunication Technologies.
Russian mobile phone operator Megafon expanded and improved Sochi's telecom infrastructure with over 700 new 2G/3G/4G cell towers. Sochi was the first Games to offer 4G connectivity at a speed of 10 MB/sec.
In January 2014, Rostelecom reported that it had connected the Olympic media centre in Sochi to the Internet and organised channels of communication with the main media centre of the Olympic Games in the coastal cluster and press centre in Moscow. The media centre was built at total cost of 17 million rubles.

Power infrastructure

A five-year strategy for increasing the power supply of the Sochi region was presented by Russian energy experts during a seminar on 29 May 2009, held by the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee, and attended by International Olympic Committee experts and officials from the Russian Ministry of Regional Development, the Russian Ministry of Energy, the State Corporation Olimpstroy and the Krasnodar Krai administration.
According to the strategy, the capacity of the regional energy network would increase by two and a half times by 2014, guaranteeing a stable power supply during and after the Games.
The power demand of Sochi at the end of May 2009 was 424 MW. The power demand of the Olympic infrastructure was expected to be about 340 MW.
  • Poselkovaya electrical substation became operational in early 2009.
  • Sochi thermal power station reconstructed
  • Laura and Rosa Khutor electrical substations were completed in November 2010
  • Mzymta electrical substation was completed in March 2011
  • Krasnopolyanskaya hydroelectric power station was completed in 2010
  • Adler CHP station design and construction was completed in 2012. Expected power output was 360 MW
  • Bytkha substation, under construction with two transformers 25 MW each, includes dependable microprocessor-based protection
Earlier plans also include building combined cycle power stations near the cities of Tuapse and Novorossiysk and construction of a cable-wire powerline, partially on the floor of the Black Sea.