Will Sochi Be Ready for 2014?

Enlarge Photo

Photo by: Courtesy of Sochi 2014

How much time is enough time to make a good Olympics? Ten years before the opening ceremonies? Four years? How about two years? The slopes for the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi, Russia, will first open for World Cup competition in 2012, just two years before the first Olympic athlete will set ski upon them. And that's if everything goes according to plan -- a big if, if recent Olympics are anything to go by. According to the Washington Post, the lead investor on the Sochi project saw his personal wealth shrink from $19 billion to just over $2 billion last year, but Vladimir Potanin is confident Sochi is on schedule for 2014. "The slopes are close to being finalized and they are more or less on schedule," Potanin said. "The major part of the whole construction will be finalized by the year 2012, when we will have the World Cup for Alpine skiing. The Olympic village and other facilities, as a whole, will be finalized by the year 2013, which means we will have one year to test everything before." Olympic champion downhiller Bernhard Russi was hired to design the Alpine course; Russi also designed Olympic courses for Albertville (1992), Lillehammer (1994), Nagano (1998) and Salt Lake City (2002).

Sochi First Snow