It’s official. Russia will host its first Winter Olympics. In 2014. In the seaside city of Sochi (population 330,000).
How did we do it? Well, there is the sarcastic answer, which circulated by email soon after the vote, that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) delegates voted for Russia because they were guided by a simple calculus: “Luchshe Olimpiada bez snega, chem Evropa bez gaza” (“Better an Olympics without snow than Europe without gas”), referring to Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas.
Funny, sure, but not really an answer to the questions, “Why Russia?” and “Why Sochi?”
There is a long and a short answer. The longer one notes several reasons why the other two prospective host cities – Salzburg, Austria and PyeongChang, South Korea – lost out at the final Guatemala IOC session. Salzburg was plagued by doping scandals and strangely chose to base its presentation on accusations against PyeongChang and Sochi. PyeongChang opted for a presentation which suggested that the Olympics would somehow help unify the two Koreas, and which featured a boy from the former Soviet republic of Moldova dreaming of a winter Olympics in Korea, which suggested to IOC delegates that Korea lacked its own winter Olympic hopefuls.
Meanwhile, Russia was smart enough to bring a number of its Winter Olympians to Guatemala – such as the charismatic figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko, speed skater Svetlana Zhurova, and former hockey star Vyacheslav Fetisov (now Russia’s sports minister). This could not but underline the fact that Russia is a Winter Olympics power that has never hosted the Winter Games.
But the short answer to the “why” questions is simple: Vladimir Putin. The Russian president’s arrival in Guatemala and his speech at the IOC session was the turning point in the 2014 Olympic race.
So how did the Sochi Organizing Committee manage to woo Putin into throwing his weight behind their bid and fly to Guatemala? “We didn’t have to ‘woo’ him into anything,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko, chairman of the committee and a Sochi native. “We knew from the outset that if we are to win, the President must come to Guatemala. Just like British Prime Minister Tony Blair came to Singapore two years ago to secure London’s win in the competition for the 2012 Summer Olympics.”
In fact, coming to Guatemala was the easy part. After all, Korean President Roh Moo Hyun was also there. The true feat was delivering his entire speech in his crude, but palatable, English. It made an impression. (Even the ever-cynical traveling media was impressed when he quipped – in English – in reply to the question of how he slept on the eve of the vote, “As my friend George [Bush] likes to say, ‘like a baby.’”
But the battle was hardly won by English alone. Russia hired top professional lobbyists who worked the IOC delegates non-stop for a year. They apparently even cajoled the delegates during the interim between the first and second round of voting – after Salzburg was eliminated (the first round vote was: PyeongChang 36, Sochi 34, Salzburg 25) and when that city’s votes went up for grabs, a time when even the press was not supposed to approach the delegates.
We know that Russia secured two Japanese delegates’ votes during this interstitial. Japan is vying for the 2016 Summer Games and thus has no interest in having the 2014 games held in Asia (the IOC has long held to a principle of rotation between continents). The three American delegates allegedly gave their votes to Russia for the same reason: Chicago is also in the running for 2016. As Russian sports observer Alexei Dospekhov speculated, “Putin did not meet in vain with his buddy George in Kennebunkport – the Guatemala vote must have been on the summit’s informal agenda.”
Yet, as it turned out, the decisive votes in support of Russia’s bid came from the 17 African countries – and here the president’s final phrase in (awkward but audacious) French, was a propos, as half of the African delegates were from former French colonies such as Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire, etc. (The second round vote was a narrow 51-47 in Sochi’s favor.)
Convincing VVP
Truth be told, Putin did not jump on the Sochi bandwagon early. He did not want to lend his support, only to find himself in the company of losers (which might explain his lack of involvement in Moscow’s 2012 Summer Olympics bid). But Putin, who is an avid skier, has a special fondness for Krasnaya Polyana – Sochi’s swanky ski resort. A professional firm pitched the Sochi bid to Putin (the same firm who worked for the Vancouver 2008 bid committee). And Putin succumbed. The presidential blessing was eventually followed by a $20 billion entitlement (Putin guaranteed a $12 billion investment, but experts say it will amount to the higher figure).
Yet, in June of this year, it looked as if Putin had backed a losing horse. The IOC’s evaluation report came out that month and was widely interpreted as ranking Sochi in third place: PyeongChang and Salzburg were assessed as “excellent,” and Sochi as just “very good.” PyeongChang was the favorite, as it had been runner-up for the 2008 games, losing to Vancouver by only three votes. But hope dies last, and Russia took heart from Vancouver’s underdog victory as well as from London’s 2005 win against the heavily-favored Paris for the 2012 games.
Putin once quipped that “Russia’s favorite sport is the eternal search for the national idea.” In fact, the president may have turned the Winter Olympics into the country’s most attractive national idea: the win reinforced Russia’s international prestige and strengthened its position on the world stage. As political observer Mikhail Delyagin said, “now Russia is an internationally recognized country at least through 2014 – unless we concoct some kind of an Afghanistan in between.”
Heaven forbid. By winning the Olympic bid, Russia proved it can play by the West’s rules and win, using top-flight PR firms to sell a coastal resort city as a winter Olympic site, despite the fact that nearly 100% of the games’ infrastructure must be built from scratch. Perhaps that is why the Russian bid committee flew in tons of equipment and technology to build an ice rink in Guatemala in just a few days – to show their skill in rapid construction starting from zero.
And, as to the snow, or worries about a lack thereof, the IOC received assurances from the highest level – from Putin that is: “I guarantee you real snow.”
Enough said.
Show Me the Money
Now that the champagne has lost its fizz, Russia must start working zasuchiv rukava (in short sleeves) to turn this Soviet-style Black Sea resort into a venue capable of hosting a Winter Olympics. “For the first time,” said political observer Igor Bunin, “Russia won in a quite professional manner on the international stage, thanks to top-notch PR experts and a brilliant effort by Putin, which cannot be denied. But now we need to follow up on that victory and a lot needs to be done for it. We need to proceed toward a ‘desovietization’ of Sochi, which is still a very Soviet city with its Soviet-style waiters and all.”
Unsmiling waiters are the least of the worries. Of 11 Olympic venues needed to host the Olympics, the Sochi Bid Committee listed only four as existing, while IOC experts during an on-site inspection said those four need so much work that they are essentially new construction.
But organizers are optimistic. Sochi has an ambitious and innovative construction plan which fits with the naturally exotic landscape, with palm-lined Black Sea beaches in the foreground and soaring, frigid mountains in the background. The plan is exceptionally compact: all of the competition venues will be within a 50-kilometer radius.
Which brings us to the potential economic impact of the games. In a note to investors titled, “Let the Gains Begin,” Alfa Bank opined that the Olympics could inject $15 billion into the local economy, with the biggest windfalls to companies involved in infrastructure, transport and leisure. Businesses and contractors are already vying for lucrative construction contracts (some to be paid from the state’s promised $12 billion). And apparatchiks are surely warming their hands in anticipating of huge otkaty (bribes taken as a percentage on state contracts). Bearing in mind this ancient Russian “tradition,” President Putin charged Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chayka with “imposing strict control over the expenditure of funds allocated to the preparation for the Sochi Olympics, so as to prevent embezzlement.” But Russia is Russia. And, even if Putin personally supervises The Sochi Project after March 2008 (which is certainly not unthinkable), notoriously corrupt local bureaucrats will seek out every possible loophole in any web of control.
On the other side of the ledger, private investors are already being “incentivized” to invest their own monies in the games. As Vice Premier Alexander Zhukov said, “The Olympic sites built with private money will remain the private property of such companies as Gazprom, Interros and Bazovy Element.”
So big money is starting to come in from some of Russia’s wealthiest businesspeople and companies. The primary focal point for investments is Krasnaya Polyana, nestled in the mountains 45 minutes outside Sochi, where developers are constructing hotels, sports complexes and ski lifts. Billionaire Vladimir Potanin, head of the Interros holding company (who reportedly first came up with the idea of the 2014 bid) announced that his company would invest $1.5 billion into the developments in Sochi and Krasnaya Polyana. “It will be a resort for everyone, and not only for the rich,” Potanin said.
Interros has already spent some $300 million developing the area’s Rosa Khutor Ski Center, said company spokesman Andrei Kirpichnikov. And, on the eve of the Sochi bid, there were press reports that Roger McCarthy, CEO of Colorado’s Breckenridge Ski Resort, has announced that he will leave that position and move to Russia to head the Rosa Khutor complex. “I have been offered the rare opportunity to be involved in leading the development of an entirely new resort from the ground up,” McCarthy said in an announcement issued by Vail Resorts, which owns Breckenridge. McCarthy has 30 years’ experience in the ski resort business and headed Breckenridge for seven years, dramatically improving its popularity and financial health. Breckenridge now ranks sixth among the best ski resorts of the United States and Canada.
Potanin is not alone. A spokesman for Chukotka Governor Roman Abramovich confirmed that the billionaire owner of the Chelsea Football Club was participating in the Olympics project, but declined to name an exact sum. Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska – owner of Bazovy Element – is investing more than $2 billion in Sochi’s airport and in a 180-hectare complex to be used during the Olympics, a spokesman said. The complex is called Imeretinskaya Valley and will feature several key Olympic venues, including six ice stadiums and the Olympic press center.
Meanwhile, the state-controlled energy giant Gazprom has already disbursed a reported $375 million into the Peshkhako Ridge project, a ski complex. And companies on the ground were bullish that all will be ready on time. “I don’t have any doubts that everything will be built,” Alexander Kozlovsky, general director of Skado, the Samara-based construction firm that worked on the Gazprom ski project, told the Moscow Times. “Only last year we helped build 40 ski slopes.”
Anatoly Chubais, head of state-controlled power company RAO EES (Unified Energy System), promised that the electricity grid in Sochi would be fully up to snuff by 2011.
All this had Vice Premier Alexander Zhukov, who headed the coordination committee supporting the Sochi Olympic bid, giddy with the games’ prospects. “The Olympics in Sochi can become the best games in the history of the Olympics,” Zhukov declared. “We have everything it takes. We have a great project, we have a site with the right climate. We have the money.” What is more, Zhukov said, Russia will get a swift return on its investment, on the order of R350 billion in TV broadcast rights, sales of memorabilia, incoming tourism, etc.: “According to our estimates, the Olympiad will pay for itself even if we take into account the huge infrastructure investment.”
Among urgent decisions ahead, Zhukov said it is critical to choose the right Olympic imagery. “A lot depends on how cute the Olympic symbols are,” Zhukov said. “Because this will have an impact on sales. We know that we could make good money on this. So I think we need to select the best design submitted by qualified artists and then select the best by popular vote.”
The design bar is set pretty high, given the famous (and beloved) Olympic Mishka (Bear) which Moscow used for the 1980 Summer Olympics. Some have even speculated that a Mishka in a shapka (fur hat) would be a sure thing.
Speaking of artists, the indefatigable Zurab Tsereteli has already launched himself into the Sochi fray. Tsereteli, whose infamously gigantic monuments have maimed central Moscow, said he intends to produce a series of monumental sculptures for Sochi, one of which will be called “Sports History in Stone,” as well as a park or square. Tsereteli was also quick to note that he was chief artist for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. “Back then, I designed 12 sites,” he said, “and was involved in the construction of hotels and sports complexes.” Tsereteli also won a contest for the best sculpture dedicated to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing; his “Olympic Colossus” will reportedly soon be unveiled in the Chinese capital.
As if that were not enough, Sochi’s chief architect, Oleg Gusev, said that Tsereteli will be commissioned to deliver three sculptures “dedicated to historical personalities, several of our contemporaries, and outstanding sportsmen.” At press-time, Tsereteli was further securing his grip on Sochi by holding a personal exhibition in the Black Sea city, connected with the 250th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Arts, which he heads.
But Tsereteli’s genre is monumental sculpture: squares or stellas. It is not likely he will deign to dabble in such petty things as Olympic mascots. Besides, if he were so entrusted, it might end up looking like his gaudy Peter the Great statue looming over the Moscow River like a tribute to disproportionate Soviet-style monumentalism.
And a dose of Soviet pomposity is the last thing Sochi needs. RL
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