2014 Winter Olympics

2014 Winter Olympics

The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXII Olympic Winter Games (French: Les XXIIes Jeux olympiques d'hiver), were a major international multi-sport event held in Sochi, Russia, in the tradition of the Winter Olympic Games.
Scheduled for 7–23 February 2014, opening rounds in certain events were held on the eve of the opening ceremony, 6 February 2014. Both the Olympics and 2014 Winter Paralympics were organized by the Sochi Organizing Committee (SOC). Sochi was selected as the host city in July 2007, during the 119th IOC Session held in Guatemala City. It is the first Olympics in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union was the host nation for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
A total of 98 events in 15 winter sport disciplines were held during the Games. A number of new competitions—a total of 12 accounting for gender—were held during the Games, including biathlon mixed relay, women's ski jumping, mixed-team figure skating, mixed-team luge, half-pipe skiing, ski and snowboard slopestyle, and snowboard parallel slalom. The events were held around two clusters of new venues: an Olympic Park constructed in Sochi's Imeretinsky Valley on the coast of the Black Sea, with Fisht Olympic Stadium, and the Games' indoor venues located within walking distance, and snow events in the resort settlement of Krasnaya Polyana.
In preparation, organizers focused on modernizing the telecommunications, electric power, and transportation infrastructures of the region. While originally budgeted at US$12 billion, various factors caused the budget to expand to over US$51 billion, surpassing the estimated $44 billion cost of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing as the most expensive Olympics in history.
The lead-up to the 2014 Games was marked by several major controversies. These included allegations of corruption leading to the aforementionedcost overruns and concerns for the safety and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) athletes, spectators and supporters during the Games due to the country's recently adopted "propaganda" law, which led to ongoing, Olympic-focused protests. There were also protests by ethnic Circassian activists over the site of Sochi, where they believe a genocide took place, and various security concerns over threats by jihadistgroups tied to the insurgency in the North Caucasus.