This year, over 2,500 athletes from 90 countries will come to the Russian city of Sochi to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics. The games will start on February 6th, with the opening ceremonies on the 7th and the Olympics will end on the 24th.
The opening and closing ceremonies will be held in Fisht Olympic Stadium, one of several new venues built for the games which include a new hockey rink, ice skating track and curling center. These and other venues will house 98 events in 7 sports. New sports that will be added this year are ski half-pipe, team figure skating, team luge, women’s figure skating, and mixed relay biathlon. However, sports are not the only addition in the Olympics. The countries of Dominica, Malta, Paraguay, Timor Leste, Togo, Tonga and Zimbabwe will all be making their Winter Olympics debut, despite most of them being warm-weather nations.
These Olympics will be the most expensive one in history with a $51 billion budget surpassing the 2008 games in Beijing, China which cost $44 billion. This new budget is over four times the original budget of the games, which was supposed to cost 12 billion, and this excess spending has been blamed on corruption, with President of Russia Vladimir Putin using taxpayer money to pay off construction costs which may have been extremely inflated. Controversy over the natural environment being destroyed is something that environmental groups have raised concern over saying that the facilities will affect the environment in the Caucasus Mountains.
However, corruption and the environment is not the worst thing that the Olympics have to contend with. There have been multiple terrorist threats before the games, most of them regarding the fact that the games will be held on the land previously occupied by the land of Circassia. The main point of contention with these extremist groups is the fact that the Russian government will not recognize these groups during the games nor will they apologize for what the Circassins consider genocide in the 1860s. Other Islamist extremist groups may also be present during the games as well.
In general most students are anxious for the games to begin.
“I like Hockey, its fun to watch.” said sophomore Zach Moormier. Fellow sophomore Derek Coso was looking forward to snowboard racing. Sophomore Madison Brady was also wanted to watch snowboarding based on her hobby of snowboarding, saying she prefers the winter games over the summer ones. While the lead up to the Olympics has been less than perfect, most people are still exited for what will certainly be an entertaining event.