Each year, thousands of hikers are drawn to the Caucasus, convinced it will be no problem to scale Europe’s highest peak. After all, it’s only 18,510 feet, and a rail car can take you up to the base camp at 12,500 feet. But Elbrus is a devious mountain.

One year from the opening of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, we look at some of the less conventional bits of news about the coming games.

The Olympics are upon us again, and already pundits are guessing at national medal counts. We, meanwhile, look at some of Russia’s top medal hopefuls.

There is not a single Russian-born player in the American Baseball Hall of Fame. Yet if the tide of history had flowed just a bit differently, Victor Starffin might well have ended up in Cooperstown alongside Ruth, Gehrig, Killebrew and Mays.

Turning Sochi into an Olympic city is a Herculean task. Environmentalists, local residents and bookkeepers are all wary. And then there is Georgia, just a few kilometers away.

Top WNBA players are streaming to Russia to play pro basketball. And while they are unquestionably having an effect on Russian basketball, Russia is having its effect on them.

A look back at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, marred by an international boycott and the sudden death of the bard Vladimir Vysotsky.

After a three-year absence, Olympic champion Yevgeny Plyuschenko is staging a comeback.

Russia has truly regained its prowess as a sports superpower, and it may rise further yet. It will surely be giving the U.S. a run for its money in the overall medals race at the Beijing Olympics in August... this rise in sports achievement takes place against the backdrop of a Russia that, without putting too fine a point on it, has bumbled from failure to failure in foreign policy in recent months

From rather inauspicious origins in the Ural mountains, Konstantin Tszyu has gone on to become the world's greatest boxer in his weight class. But he has never lost his perspective.

Olympics news, TV schedules, events, medals and more.

Russia and the politics of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Also, list of Russian 2002 Olympic hopefuls by sport.