Can't wait to see Sochi
Posted: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 11:17 PM
It’s amazing how little attention we pay to the rest of the world. I hadn’t even known that the 2014 Winter Olympics were due to be awarded until the announcement was made today that they’re going to Sochi, a Black Sea resort in Russia.
You can lay that to the fact that none of the candidate cities were in the United States. If we’re not involved, we don’t care.
It’s a bad way to approach the world. As we’re learning every day, just because something doesn’t happen here doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect us. But that’s a discussion for another section of the site.
I wish Salzburg had won the bid, but that’s totally personal. I lived there for a while once, and it is in my opinion one of the most gorgeous and agreeable cities in the world.
But I’m happy for Russia, which has finally landed an Olympics that the entire world will attend – provided we haven’t blown ourselves up by then. The old USSR had the games in 1980, but those were the ones Jimmy Carter boycotted. In return, the Russians boycotted L.A. in 1984. That little episode of political meddling threatened to end the modern Games.
Sochi seems like a perfect Olympic venue. It’s a Black Sea resort – Vladimir Putin has a dacha there – with a Mediterranean climate. But the nearby Caucasus Mountains are snow-covered in winter. It’s sporting claim to fame is as the hometown of Maria Sharapova.
To my mind, the best Olympic venues are those that serve to introduce a city, region and country to the world, places that we’ve never been to before. The 1992 Summer Games showed us what an absolutely fabulous city Barcelona is. In 2000, we all discovered Sydney, another delightful city. And 1988 put Seoul and Korea front and center in the world’s consciousness.
It works both ways, though. In 1996, Atlanta presented itself to the world and made a mess of it with the worst-organized games I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen nine of them. And while it was a treat personally to return to Athens, the Games haven’t seemed to have any lasting effect on that historic city.
The Sochi 2014 Web site is into some heavy backslapping right now. The headline splashed across the front page advertises Sochi as “The Gateway to the Future.”
That’s a little grandiose. Until the IOC gave the Games to the city, I’d never heard of it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t swell. I hadn’t heard of Lillehammer, either, and those who covered those Games (I regret to say I was not among them.) still get weak in the knees talking about that little Norwegian bit of winter heaven.
Sochi is bigger than Lillehammer, and it’s not going to feel a lot like winter in town. At least it better not; the town is located on what the locals call the Russian Riviera. It’s seven years away, but I can’t wait to see it.
