The Rise of the Russians

The rise of the Russians 

In the next decade a large majority of sporting events will be held in the new emerging city of Sochi in Russia, including the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, a new Formula 1 circuit and a hosting city of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

The first of these events will be the winter Olympics which is taking place this coming February and will be the most expensive of games in history, so far costing $48 billion and highlighting the growing economic strength of the nation. The purpose of the extravagant new city is to showcase itself after the split of the Soviet Union which Russia wasn't exactly able to economically flourish from. 

But now in Sochi, Russia have created a world class, year round sporting resource from a fading city (similar to Dubai) in which thousands of new apartments have been built to attract investors and to change the general view of Russia to one that is glitzy and glamorous. The location of Sochi is also beneficial with there being a coastline to the Caspian Sea, which has invited a marina to be built that will accommodate Cruise ships during the games and whenever there are events taking place which in the near future will be regularly. 

Vladimir Putin is not going to allow anything to go wrong with his games, which in Vancouver 4 years ago it very nearly did with the weather being a scorching 4 degrees celcius (almost never seen in a Canadian winter! ) causing disruption with the melting snow. Well, you can be sure that this will not happen this year as Russia has spent $10 million stockpiling snow simply as a precaution that there will be an incredibly mild Russian winter. So what could possibly go wrong?

Unfortunately, a lot. Russia are never out of the spotlight long when it comes to their unpopular views and corruption and these problems have been highlighted recently with the Russian Ministry of Justice proclaimed that Pride House, an organisation that supports LGBT athletes, present at Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 will be unwelcome in Sochi 2014 as they promote "propaganda of a non-traditional sexual orientation", which has obviously not been received particularly well and has even been dubbed as a 'war against homosexuality' and their is a strong possibility that nations will decide to boycott the games completely due to this.

Also, Sochi is far from an ideal location as it is on the boarders of a national park, so much needed infrastructure such as transport links and the possibility of expansion of the city is very unlikely. Furthermore, corruption has been heavily predominant throughout the bid for the games as the cost of the games was originally estimated at $12 billion (overspending of 75%) has been blamed on the representatives of Putin's government. It is also fair to say that the people of Sochi  have been ill treated by their government, as when buying the land of Sochi from residents, the people couldn't get their land approved as private property. What can also not be overlooked is the poor working conditions faced by the workers when constructing the city that to date has seen 25 deaths on site, which is far from safe working conditions.

So, it will be interesting in the coming months and years how successful the Olympic games will be and indeed the World Cup and what people will perceive the country of Russia to be...