On-the-Scene -- Putin Welcomes IOC President to Sochi

(ATR) IOC president Thomas Bach today met Russian president Vladimir Putin in Sochi for discussions about Olympic preparations.

Putin and Bach, making his first visit to the Black Sea resort as IOC chief, opened the new rail terminal in Adler.

Connected to the city, it will be an important transport hub for the Games. Built to serve 15,000 people an hour, it links both to the Olympic Park in the coastal zone and the Krasnaya Polyana mountain venues.

Bach told Putin he was confident that Russia would deliver a great Games.

"We’re sure that the Olympics will be organized in the most proficient manner," Bach was quoted by Russia media. "Sochi and the entire region have made much progress over the last years."

Bach, in Sochi for the first time since chairing the IOC Evaluation Commission for the 2002 Olympics, is part of an IOC delegation checking up on Games progress and attending the World Sport and Environment Conference.

The German did not visit any Olympic venues today but is expected to do so Tuesday in addition to further meetings with Russian Olympic officials and the Sochi 2014 team led by president and CEO Dmitry Chernyshenko.

IOC Coordination Commission chairman Jean-Claude Killy and Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli are among a host of top officials attending the Oct. 30 to Nov 1 conference at the Radisson Blu Hotel on the Olympic Park.

Bach’s arrival couldn’t have been timed better. The daytime temperature hovering around 18 degrees Celsius and blue skies overhead betray the fact that Sochi will host the Games in three months’ time.

The Fisht Olympic Stadium was gleaming in the sunshine; the snowcapped mountains 40 kilometers in the distance are a reminder that the Olympics are taking place in a subtropical destination favored by Putin as his summer getaway.

Last week, the first snow fell in the mountains, much earlier than usual, according to Around the Rings’s tour guide.

The multibillion-dollar investment in transport infrastructure is evident on the journey from the airport to the Olympic Park.

The road-widening scheme and upgrades from the airport to the coastal Olympic hub together with the railroad development are impressive.

But the revamped roads proved a little too confusing for the van driver transporting ATR and another delegate to the Radisson Blu.

Despite empty roads, twice he took the wrong route and ended up at a different entrance to the Olympic Park. Some lessons there for Sochi 2014.

At the Olympic Park, the shiny ice venues, hotels, and Games-related developments dot the landscape by the Black Sea. Noticeable too is the vast amount of work that has still to be done to landscape large swaths of the park.

Sochi 2014 has 101 days to do it. The sport and environment conference will update delegates on what has been done to achieve sustainable goals for the Games and what is left to achieve.

Reported by Mark Bissonin Sochi

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