Sochi Heat Won`t Affect Paralympics; No Velodrome in Sochi

Unseasonal Sochi Heat Won't Affect Paralympics – Organizers

As the mercury in Sochi continues to rise, organizers made assurances Thursday there will be no problem with the snow at the Winter Paralympic Games that start Friday.

At the Krasnaya Polyana village where the alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and biathlon competitions are to be held, the temperature rose to 14 degrees Celsius on Thursday, and the forecasts indicate the mini heatwave won't let up anytime soon.

"We have strong contingency plans that had already been tested ahead of the Games, as we conducted a number of test events," vice president of the organizing committee Alexandra Kosterina said.

"We don't have any doubts that the competitions will be held and will be successful. Yes, we've seen some heat and we hope we'll see a lot of heat in the competitions."

During the February 7-23 Olympics, there were some minor snow problems, causing complaints from several alpine skiers and an unusual number of falls at the biathlon and cross-country skiing events. There was also thick fog leading to the delay of several events.

It is unclear if organizers dipped into the approximately half a million cubic meters of snow kept in storage during the Olympics.

The XI Winter Paralympics will be held from March 7 to 16.

Sochi's Iceberg Arena Unlikely to Become Velodrome - Official

Sochi's Olympic figure skating venue, the Iceberg Skating Palace, is unlikely to be transformed into a velodrome as initially planned, a Russian cycling official said Thursday.

The 12,000-seater venue is one of six arenas in the coastal cluster of facilities on Russia's Black Sea coastline, and legacy plans had envisaged a new future as the center of the country's track cycling program.

The president of Russia's Olympic committee Alexander Zhukov said February 23, the last day of the Games, that its final function was yet to be decided and Vladimir Vagenleitner, who is responsible for cycling development in Sochi's region of Krasnodar, went further Thursday.

"There's a government decree to reconstruct the Iceberg (into a velodrome), our federation's specialists are working on it. A project will obviously be carried out, but will the reconstruction take place? We can suppose with a great deal of certainty that the ice arena Iceberg will remain an ice arena," Vagenleitner said.

"But we will still push for the creation of infrastructure to develop cycling in this region," he added.

Across the board, legacy plans for the newly built Olympic facilities have changed several times since Sochi won the bid for the Games in 2007.

There is uncertainty over the idea to turn two hockey arenas into an $8 million-a-year children’s sport academy, and three venues that were designed to be dismantled and moved elsewhere will instead all stay in place under current specifications.

Under existing plans, the new All-Russian Childrens’ Sport and Health Center will occupy the 7,000-capacity Shayba hockey arena, also known as the Small Arena, which will host women’s hockey during the Games, and the training hall for hockey, which will not be used for competition.

The Fisht Olympic Stadium will become a venue for the 2018 football World Cup, while the main hockey arena, the Bolshoi Ice Dome, looks likely to host a KHL professional hockey team.

The main long-track speedskating venue, the Adler Arena, is to be an exhibition center, while the 3,000-capacity Ice Cube Curling Center is envisaged as a training facility after earlier plans for a move to Moscow were dropped.

In the mountains, the Alpine venues will revert to being ski resorts or training centers for Russia’s national teams in various sports.

Homepage Photo: Getty Images

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