SOCHI
Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in the Russian city of Sochi between the 7th and 23rd February 2014 begins after the opening ceremony at Fisht Olympic Stadium on Friday.
In addition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, many prime ministers and presidents of the participating countries including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will attend the ceremony.
Venues located next to the coast in the Olympic Park such as the Bolshoy Ice Dome, Fisht Olympic Stadium, Shayba Arena, Ice Cube Curling Center, Adler Arena Skating Center, Iceberg Skating Palace and Sochi Medals Plaza and mountain clusters such as Laura Biathlon and Ski Complex, Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort, RusSki Gorki Jumping Center and Sliding Center Sanki will host many athletes from 15 sports in 7 different branches.
Figure skating, speed skating, short track, ice hockey and curling competitions will be held in the venues next to the coast and competitions such as the biathlon, cross-country, ski jumping, nordic combined skiing, alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, snowboard, bobsleigh, skeleton and luge will be made in the mountain clusters.
Regarded as the most expensive Winter Olympics with its 50-billion-dollar expenditure, Sochi 2014 will host 2,874 athletes from 87 countries. This might be the broadest participated sports event so far.
With a total of 232 participating athletes, the host nation Russia leads the way. Russia is followed by the USA participating with 230 athletes and Canada coming in third with 220 athletes in total. Meanwhile, Turkey will be represented by six athletes in three different branches in Sochi.
Turkish athletes in Sochi are as follows:
Alper Ucar and Alisa Agafonova in Figure skating
Kelime Cetinkaya and Sabahattin Oglago in Speed skating
Tugba Kocaaga and Emre Simsek in Alpine skiing
Security has been stepped up in Sochi following terrorism threats. 37,000 police officers in total including those coming from nearby cities will be on duty in Sochi for the Olympic Games and several warships will be placed off the coast also.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
