Sochi Sponsors Impressed; IOC Satisfied No Impact from World Cup Preparations

(ATR) Days after the IOC gave the thumbs-up to Russia's Winter Olympic organizers, Sochi's worldwide and domestic partners gathered in the 2014 host city for an update on preparations across the project.

Representatives from the Sochi 2014 Partners’ Club took part in a two-day seminar, starting Monday, to discuss commercial opportunities and to check out progress on Games venues and initiatives.

The annual meeting in the Krasnaya Polyana mountain resort, venue for all snow sport events at Sochi 2014, was attended by officials from Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Omega, P&G, Samsung, Panasonic, Visa, Aeroflot, BOSCO Sport, MegaFon, Russian Railways, Rosneft, Rostelecom, Sberbank, Volkswagen Group Rus and Ingosstrakh.

A venue tour took place with Sochi 2014 leaders providing a detailed update on the partners’ activation programs and marketing opportunities in the Russian market.

Sochi 2014 President and CEO Dmitry Chernyshenko, who today announced via Twitter the launch of projects for the design of Olympic and Paralympic torches and cauldron, said the partners' support had helped the organizing committee break Olympic sponsorship records with a commercial program worth more than $1 billion.

Members of the Sochi 2014 Partners’ Club were impressed with what they saw and heard from Games organizers.

"On our visit to Rosa Khutor today, I thought back to my trip to Sochi two years ago and the vision outlined for the Olympic Winter Games then," said Thierry Borra, Coca-Cola's director of Olympic Games management.

"Now I can see those dreams are becoming a reality. Coming here to Sochi makes you realize the immensity of what is going to take place in just over three years time."

George Hamilton, vice president of Olympic operations at the Dow Chemical Company, added: "The beauty of the area, both in the mountains and at the coast reinforced the message of preservation and sustainability and Dow's role in contributing to a green footprint for the Games."

Visa's head of global sponsorship management, Michael O'Hara Lynch, extolled the virtues of the Sochi 2014 Partners’ Club, saying the initiative was "a very useful communication tool helping us to keep up with fastpaces of construction works and align our forces with other partners to help make the 2014 Olympic Winter Games the best ever".

Chernyshenko said last week's IOC project review had shown the IOC's coordination commission chair Jean-Claude-Killy and Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli that 2014 organizers were sticking to the timetable for the Games.

"The IOC is satisfied with preparations for the Games," Chernyshenko tweeted on Friday. "J-C Killy was impressed by the job of OCOG and the level of detailing three years prior to the Games."

Killy and Felli held closed-door meetings with various 2014 officials including Chernyshenko and Dmitry Kozak, Russia's deputy prime minister in charge of the Games. They discussed the progress on 54 key functions of Games preparations.

The IOC executives took part in a ceremony for the opening of the first stage of works at the tunnel complex No. 1, part of a combined railway and highway which will provide a link between the mountain and coastal clusters at the Games.

Implementation of this project will cut travel time from coast to mountains to just 30 minutes. Killy and Felli also rode the first nine miles of rail track into the Krasnaya Polyana mountains.

Killy said Sochi 2014 was "on course for top quality Games and we’ve been pleased with the progress that we’ve seen over the past two days".

He insisted the IOC was not worried that Sochi's Olympic preparations would be affected by the massive construction and organization effort needed to stage FIFA's World Cup in Russia in 2018. Around $3.3 billion has already been sunk into Sochi 2014 preparations alone, Kozak confirmed on Friday.

"There will be tremendous synergies for the country in a number of areas as it strives to put on these two great sporting events," Killy said.

"In particular, the Games will leave a tremendous human legacy. The highly trained professionals and volunteers from the Games will no doubt play a key role in the success of the World Cup and other major sporting events that Russia will host in the future."

Written by Mark Bisson.