Road, rail and venues for Sochi games

Construction work for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russia seaside city of Sochi is said to be progressing on target, with some of the work, which includes extensive infrastructure projects, already completed.

The recently-held 9^th International Investment Forum held in Sochi provided an opportunity to report on the progress of the games.

The Black Sea resort is seeing a massive amount of construction work in readiness for the games. In addition to the building of the various venues for competition, new roads are being built, along with new interchanges, and an integrated road and railway connecting the Adler district of Sochi with the Alpica-Service mountain resort for the skiing elements of the games.

The organisers claimed that travel to the mountain resort from Sochi would be 30 minutes by rail, whereas at the most recent Winter Olympics, it took two and a half hours to reach the mountains from Vancouver.

At the Investment Forum, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin heard that tens of thousands of trees were being planted, and that Sochi National Park was set to be expanded to 20000 ha as environmental compensation measures.

The new terminal at Sochi International Airport was put into commission on the first day of the Forum, and a commemorative time capsule was laid into the foundations of the Central Stadium for the games.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said in July that the cost of the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games would be € 4,4 billion.