2014 Olympics

The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXII Olympic Winter Games and simply known as Sochi 2014, was an international multi-sport winter event held in Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia from February 7-23, 2014, with preliminary rounds in several sports played on the eve of the opening ceremonies, February 6, 2014. Both the Games and the 2014 Winter Paralympics were hosted by the Sochi Organising Committee. In July 2007, Sochi was selected as host city at the 119th IOC Session held in Guatemala City. This was the first Games to be held on a CIS territory since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Formerly the Soviet Union was the host nation of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. This is the first Olympic Games of the World Olympic Committee chaired by Thomas Bach. A record 98 events took place in 15 disciplines of winter sport during the Olympics. A number of new activities – a total of twelve gender records – were held during the Games, including mixed relay biathlon, female ski jumping, mixed-team racing, mixed-team luge, half-pipe skiing, ski and snowboard slopestyle, and parallel slalom snowboarding. The events took place around two clusters of new venues: an Olympic Park built on the Black Sea coast in Sochi's Imeretinsky Valley, with Fisht Olympic Stadium and indoor facilities within walking distance of the Olympics, and snow sports in the resort city of Krasnaya Polyana. Winter Games 2014 is the most lavish games in the history of the Olympics. Although initially budgeted at US$ 12 billion, major cost overruns resulted in this figure rising to US$ 51 billion, more than three times the cost of the 2012 London Olympics and almost exceeding the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics ' nearly $44 billion loss. The 2014 Games reached an audience of 2.1 billion people globally on TV. An independent investigation published in 2016 by the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed charges that the Russian Olympic team had engaged in a state-sponsored doping programme, running from at least the late 2011 to August 2015. At the Sochi Winter Olympics, the plan got embroiled, and the cover-up had covered the athletes. In 2017, the IOC stripped thirteen medals from Russian athletes but nine were returned by the Court of Arbitration for Competition. In December 2017, the IOC voted to disband the Russian Olympic Committee, with an incentive for whitelisted athletes to compete independently in the 2018 Winter Olympics. On 29 September 2013, the Olympic torch was lit in Ancient Olympia, beginning a seven-day journey through Greece and on to Russia, then the torch relay started in Moscow on 7 October 2013 before passing through 83 Russian cities and arriving in Sochi on the opening day, 7 February 2014. It is the longest torch relay in Olympic history, a 60,000-kilometer (40,000 miles) journey from west Kaliningrad to east Chukotka, travelling all over the country. The Olympic torch reached the North Pole with a nuclear powered icebreaker for the very first time. The torch was also sent to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time on Soyuz TMA-11 M flight into orbit, but not lit for safety reasons for the remainder of the mission. The spacecraft itself has been painted in livery, with an Olympic theme like the Games logo. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky have lifted the torch on a spacewalk outside ISS. The torch returned to Earth five days later on board Soyuz TMA-09M. The torch also reached the highest point in Europe, Mount Elbrus and Lake Baikal in Siberia. The opening ceremony for Winter Olympics 2014 took place on 7 February 2014 at Fisht Olympic Stadium, an indoor venue built especially for the ceremonies. The ceremonies featured scenes based on aspects of Russian culture and the arts including theatre, classical music, the Russian Revolution and the time of the Soviet Union. The opening scene of the ceremony featured a noticeable technical malfunction, in which one of five snowflakes to be stretched to form the Olympic rings failed and did not develop.