The President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge is in Sochi, where he is looking at the preparations for the 2014 Winter Games.
It has been a busy day for members of the International Olympic Committee and for all Russian and foreign sport officials that are visiting Sochi this week.
The organizers of the Vancouver Olympics will have to pass their knowledge and experience on to those responsible for future games – the 2012 London Olympics and 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. There are three main parts to the event – one dedicated to technological aspects of the Vancouver games, which has already concluded. The second started today with a series of workshops on organizational aspects of the Games, and the third part will be dedicated solely to the Paralympic Games.
Members of the IOC once again had a chance to see for themselves how Sochi is preparing for the big event. The program included visits to Roza Khutor and Imereti Lowland – parts of the two clusters of the Olympic construction. One of them, by the Black Sea, is the circled coastal cluster, and the other, higher up in the Caucasus Mountains, is Krasnaya Polyana.
Besides construction sites, part of the visit was dedicated to environmental issues. The IOC has strict environmental guidelines and organizers have to follow all these regulations. In Sochi, several programs have been launched to preserve endangered species.
Members of the IOC are frequent visitors to Sochi, so they know the situation first-hand. President of the IOC Jacques Rogge shared his view of the progress in the Olympic preparations.
“The purpose of the visit was definitely to meet with the Prime Minister, but also of course to assist in the briefing. I was here two years ago, and two years ago there was nothing much to see in the valley,” he said, adding, “What I saw yesterday and this morning is really impressive.”
“You will be ready if you continue to work at that pace,” Rogge stressed.