The Sochi Winter Olympics - a Shameful Catastrophe for Amateur Athletics

Welcome to Sochi, Russua, home of the most expensive (est. $51 billion) Winter Olympics in history. For the 17 days of the Games, that is $3 billion per day. And what does $3 billion a day buy? A horror story. (1). Workers are scrambling to make adjustments to Sochi’s slopestyle snowboard course after Norwegian snowboarder Torstein Horgmo broke his collarbone in a crash in a practice run while attempting to do a difficult trick on a rail. Horgmo was forced to withdraw from the Olympic Games. But the “real issue” with the slopestyle course - which is filled with various types of jumps and rails - is the height of the course’s jumps, according to venue safety expert Steve Adelman. “Athletes become airborne so high and so long, that landing safely becomes an issue,” Adelman told CTV’s Canada AM on Tuesday. Adelman said the course’s jumps are being adjusted to create the fine balance between being high enough so that people can do their jumps, but not so high that someone gets seriously injured.” Olympic officials plan to reduce the combined height of the three jumps on the course by a total of 1.82 metres. When asked about the course, Canadian snowboarder Sebastien Toutant told the Olympic News Service : “It’s like jumping out of a building.” Organizers are also adjusting the proximity of the ramps and rails at the top of course, following Horgmo’s crash. While athletes had been complaining about the rails being “sticky,” which led to Horgmo’s crash, Adelman said the rails were “less of a long-standing concern” than the height of the jumps. Adelman said a lack of snow last February prevented athletes from testing the new course which is why plans to adjust the rails and jumps are only being made now. Snowboard slopestyle qualifications only begin on Thursday ahead of Friday's opening ceremony. (2). Reporters from around the world have begun cataloguing a litany of accommodation-related woes in Sochi, Russia, as organizers scramble to finish the construction of some hotels three days before the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Organizers admitted earlier last week that three of the nine media hotels were not completed. The Guardian's Moscow bureau chief Shaun Walker reported that when he tried to check into his room at midday Tuesday, he was told by a receptionist, "Your room is still under construction. They are literally finishing, the keys are literally coming now." Three hours later, Walker reported the same receptionist offered him a different room "with no heating, a single bed, and permeated with the odour of industrial glue." Those who have managed to get rooms have found the amenities less than ideal, as Chicago Tribune reporter Stacy St Clair tweeted : "My hotel has no water. If restored," the front desk says, "do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous." Later, St. Clair tweeted "Water restored, sorta. On the bright side, I now know what very dangerous face water looks like." Canadian sports columnist Bruce Arthur wrote, "Almost every room is missing something: lightbulbs, TVs, lamps, chairs curtains, wifi, heat, hot water. Shower curtains are a valuable piece of the future black market here. (One American photographer was simply told, 'You will not get a shower curtain.')" At a news conference Monday, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach insisted that Sochi was ready to stage the Winter Olympics despite concerns over terrorism carried out by Islamic militants from the restive North Caucuses region neighboring the city, unfinished construction, and human rights concerns caused by Russia's now-infamous law against "homosexual propaganda." However, as Arthur noted "[W]hat we have is a sea of little failures that give rise to the spectre of bigger ones. The Boston Globe drove a local car within a couple hundred feet of the Main Press Centre Tuesday, which is a proximity unthinkable in previous Olympics." For now, however, most will settle for the creature comforts. Yahoo Sports hockey writer Nick Cotsonika tweeted that when he visited the Soviet Union in 1991, he could take a shower but in Sochi he can't. (3). Speaking of security at Sochi, it is an area that has received more attention than the reason for the Olympic Games - amateur athletic competition. Driving towards Sochi along the only access road, you have to go through a huge concrete checkpoint in the tiny hamlet of Magri 60 miles (100 km) short of the Sochi city center. During the Winter Olympics, only vehicles registered in Sochi - and those with special permission - are being allowed through the checkpoint. On-site reporters say they have witnessed every bus, truck and car being searched by police officers with sniffer dogs. The checkpoint is overseen by Russia's internal security service, the FSB. Apart from the road, and the single railway line, Sochi is effectively cut off from the outside world. The long coastal strip bordered by the Caucasus Mountains to the north-east and the Black Sea to the south-west has become what seems to be one large security checkpoint. And along the internal road leading from Sochi proper where arena events will occur up to the mountain sites where outdoor events are scheduled, there are white tents and winter-white dressed military security forces "hidden" in the woods along the road, some as close as ten meters apart. Nevertheless, Alexei Navalny - the opposition leader who is one of President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics - thinks it is unlikely that Sochi itself will be attacked. "I think that the security measures which are in place will guarantee security in Sochi," he said. "Of course this region isn't very stable, but in the end I'm sure that the Russian state is capable of ensuring security in the Olympic zone." ~~~~~ Dear readers, in the Soviet era, western delegations had their hotel rooms bugged and the security eavesdroppers left the door to their equipment rooms open - you could say hello to them as you passed on the way to your room. In the oligarch period in the 1990s, the water coming out of shower heads in Siberian industrial city hotels was charcoal-colored. Anyone who has been outside Moscow and St. Petersburg knows what the reality of Russia was and, most probably, still is. BUT, we need to remember that Putin's summer residence is in Sochi. And Vladimir Putin has put his international reputation on the line. He will in all likelihood produce a safe Winter Olympics. Safe - guarded by 40,000 police officers and troops, at least one anti-aircraft battery and a flotilla of naval craft. But in terms of the spirit of amateur athletics, it is a shameful catastrophe.