31.01 Battle Rages for Sochi’s Political Legacy

MOSCOW, January 31 (R-Sport, David Nowak) – The Sochi Games are still a week away, and yet for many their political legacy is already set in stone.

Some people cast them as a snow-sprinkled symbol of the resurgent, ideologically retuned and self-assured Russia – a country that must be reckoned with.

Others see them as the perfect microcosm of everything wrong with the nation: beset by security issues, undermined by corruption, tainted by twisted notions of human rights.

These two visions, though not entirely incompatible, have locked horns in the run-up to the Games – a battle that warrants a closer examination of their origin.

It was on the pristine Alpine slopes of Austria that the Games were born. On a ski trip together some time before the bid was announced, President Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Potanin, the metals tycoon, discussed the lack of such world-class facilities back home. A winter sports powerhouse dating back to Soviet times, Russia was long overdue a decent winter sports retreat. The pair agreed that hosting the Olympics would provide the perfect catalyst, according to Potanin’s account of the story, and that they could both enjoy the facilities themselves, just dandy.

And so, despite zero sporting infrastructure in Sochi, with the coastal cluster resembling a marsh and a couple of rusty chairlifts in the mountains above, Putin would woo the International Olympic Committee into granting Russia its first-ever Winter Games, and Potanin would go on to build the Rosa Khutor Alpine Skiing Center through his Interros holding company.