05.02 Winter Olympics to Put Sochi on the Map – Sharapova

SOCHI, February 5 (R-Sport) – Tennis ace Maria Sharapova says she hopes the Winter Olympics will put her home town of Sochi on the map.

The four-time Grand Slam winner, who is in town as part of NBC's commentary team for the February 7-23 event, spent her early childhood in Sochi before moving to Florida at the age of 7.

"When I flew to America, I was only 7 or 8, and when I spoke about Sochi, just nobody knew about the town," Sharapova said.

"I said that it's on the Black Sea, that you can ski there. I hope that after these Olympics, everyone will understand how great that it," the 27-year-old added.

She spoke fondly about her childhood in Sochi.

"My recollections are mainly about the tennis. I started playing tennis in a park here with my dad. I would always go for a swim in the Black Sea, we would go into the mountains with my parents, and to the circus."

Back then, Sochi, a city of 350,000, was really a summer-only resort, with millions of Russians sent there on vacations that were often subsidized by the state. The ski infrastructure in the mountains was limited to a couple of rusty chairlifts.

Its transformation into a year-round resort began in 2007, when the International Olympic Committee picked the city to stage the 2014 Games over Salzburg and Pyongchang.

Since then, $51 billion in state and private funds have been plowed into the region to prepare it for Russia's first Winter Games, with modern sports facilities built alongside new roads, hotels and other infrastructure. Critics say a significant chunk of that money has disappeared.