For Faded Russian Resort, A Truly Olympic Task
Sochi Lacks Even the Essentials for 2014 Games

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 24, 2008

SOCHI, Russia -- Vladimir Putin's field of dreams is a drained marsh with a solitary cow, some rows of potato stalks and a small cemetery that dates to 1911. On this unlikely piece of turf, reached by a narrow road that skirts the Black Sea, Russia is planning to build an Olympic park to stage the 2014 Winter Games.

It is an enormous and fabulously expensive undertaking that will require nothing less than the total transformation of this faded resort, a onetime favorite of the Communist elite.

Sochi and the Caucasus Mountains above it boast impressive scenery and great snow but as yet no world-class sports facilities. The city also lacks just about every other kind of facility that will be needed to host the many tens of thousands of people who will come for the Games -- an adequate transportation system, ample electricity and telecommunications, hotels, even a functional sewage system.

"It's probably the most challenging Olympics ever, as far as what has to be built to deliver these Olympic Games," said Jean-Claude Killy, the former French champion skier, who last month headed up a coordination committee of the International Olympic Committee that visited Sochi. "We have a lot of work to do together."

In vying for the Games last year, Sochi went up against Salzburg, Austria, and Pyeongchang, South Korea, both of which could have prepared for 2014 with a lot less work. Putin, then Russia's president, flew to the IOC selection meeting in Guatemala and personally lobbied for Sochi. Its final 51 to 47 victory over Pyeongchang was attributed largely to Putin's intervention and the Russian government's pledge of big-scale financing.

Early estimates put the cost at $13 billion, more than double the preparation costs of the three previous Winter Games combined. Plans called for the Russian government to provide $8 billion, with the rest coming from private sources such as Kremlin-friendly tycoons and the state-controlled energy giant Gazprom. But already the price tag is rising. "The figures that were stated earlier have doubled," Sergei Stepashin, chairman of the Russian Audit Chamber, a federal watchdog organization, told a parliamentary committee last month.

Arguments over the true expense may have cost one prominent official his job, analysts in Moscow say. Semyon Vainshtok, head of Olimpstroi, the state corporation overseeing the construction, abruptly resigned last month. He said his work was done, but just weeks before quitting he had warned parliament that the government's costs could triple.

State experts, he said, had confirmed none of the original estimates. He said that transportation upgrades alone could cost $13.5 billion and that an additional $3.5 billion needed to acquire land "was not even taken into account."

Costs are rising particularly fast for the network of roads and rail that will link the city with the mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana, located 27 miles away across rough, rising terrain. Further complicating the plans are environmentalists and homeowners who are threatening legal action to block various construction projects.

But the organizers are undaunted and insist they are on schedule. "We didn't promise anyone that with a click of the fingers we will open all the stadiums and solve all problems," said Efim Bitenev, deputy director of the representative office of the organizing committee.

Olimpstroi didn't respond to e-mailed questions regarding the project. But Aleksei Malkov, a local official, said Sochi has a trump card: "We have the guarantee of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin that we will succeed."

The Games will be held in two locations. In Sochi, authorities plan to build a 480-acre Olympic park that will include a village to house the athletes and six stadiums for indoor events and the opening and closing ceremonies. (The cemetery in the middle of the planned park will be fenced in.) In the mountains, another Olympic village is planned as well as facilities for skiing, bobsled and other events.

All of that is probably the easy part. Local officials say that to support the Games, the city will need 360 miles of new roads, 440 miles of fiber-optic cable, a light-rail system, an expanded airport, two new power stations, 30,000 new hotel rooms, a new seaport and new sewage treatment plants.

Getting people to and from the mountaintops will require 60 miles of new roads and rail as well as 37 miles of tunnels, according to Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin.

Sochi, a city of 400,000 residents, will take in 180,000 workers to get these many jobs done, according to federal estimates.

Land prices have soared in advance of the expected construction boom; upscale apartments are already selling for $1,000 a square foot. But for about 1,400 people with homes near the future Olympic park in Sochi, the development of new hotels, apartments and retail complexes means eviction. The Russian parliament passed a law allowing the local authorities to seize land deemed essential to the Games.

Local officials have promised to compensate each affected homeowner with cash, land, or a new apartment or house. "Not a single person should suffer," Malkov said. "This land will be taken, but they will be compensated with as much as their land would get on the open market."

"I don't believe them," said Vladislav Boldeskul, 38, who has stopped construction on a nearly completed home for his extended family that he began in 2004. "If you know Russia, you know why I don't believe them."

Residents also argue that their homes, which lie outside the park site, are not necessary for the Games. "I have a feeling our land is already sold," said Dmitri Vishnevsky, 38, who farms a small plot by the park. "But we will fight by all lawful means for our homes."

The authorities view the Olympics as turning Sochi into a world-class resort that will continue to attract tourists long after the Games are over.

"In a few years there will be nothing Soviet left and Sochi will match any European resort," said Sergei Krivonosov, who owns a number of restaurants and nightclubs in Sochi. One of his clubs, called Platform, features a glass dance floor over the Black Sea with women in G-string bikinis lolling on floats beneath the gyrating patrons.

Some of Russia's richest businessmen, all allies of the Kremlin, have stepped in as Olympic boosters. Billionaire Oleg Deripaska is planning a resort on the Black Sea adjacent to the Olympic park. He has also built a new terminal for Sochi's airport and a new five-star hotel downtown.

Vladimir Potanin, a metals magnate, is plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into a resort that will host alpine skiing events. Close by is another exclusive facility built by Gazprom, where cross-country and biathlon skiing events will be held.

The environmental group Greenpeace argues that some of the development in the mountains is encroaching on a nature reserve that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Both the mountain Olympic village and the bobsled course will be built right on the border of the protected wilderness. Greenpeace said it has proposed a series of alternative sites that the authorities have rejected.

"Any construction on the border will damage the whole natural complex inside," said Andrei Petrov of Greenpeace Russia, who voiced suspicions that the Olympic organizers' insistence on opening this untouched part of the mountains is about future development, not the 2014 Games. He said Greenpeace has contacted lawyers in Switzerland, home of the IOC, to explore the possibility of a lawsuit.

The Russian organizers are unmoved.

"We are studying the alternatives they are offering, but at the moment I don't see a better alternative for luge and bobsleigh," Bitenev said. "And with or without the Olympics, this place will be developed."