MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia managed to achieve all of its set goals in the organization of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, which gave the country a highly demanded year-round resort.
“We have achieved everything that we wanted to achieve in the preparation and the organization of the Olympics,” Putin said at his annual news conference. “We have achieved even more that we dreamed about — we won the Olympics and for this we heartily thank our Olympic and Paralympic athletes, who were the real heroes of the Games.”
The president said that the authorities thought well in advance about the future of the Olympic infrastructure and already held there Formula One Grand Prix and the FIDE Chess World Championship.
“I am sure that everything has been booked out there by the end of the mountain skiing season and there are simply no vacancies already,” Putin said. “It proves that we, people of Russia, now have a new year-round recreation center both for summer and winter seasons.”
The president added that a number of global sports events were already scheduled to be held in Sochi and the infrastructure left after the Olympics was not idling.
Sochi Olympics
Russia’s Black Sea resort city of Sochi hosted in February and March the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, which, according to international sports officials, athletes and visitors, were organized at the highest level possible and provided up-to-date infrastructure at all levels as well as security for all participants in the event.
The Russian Olympic team made a considerable leap in its performance at the Games in Sochi comparing to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada’s Vancouver, where it finished with its worst ever medal tally in Winter Games, clinching three golds and ranking in 11th place in the overall medals standings.
This year, however, with only two days before the closing of the Sochi Olympics on February 23, the Russian team jumped in the first place of overall medals rankings and cemented the result on the last day of the Games by clinching two more gold, one silver and one bronze medals.
The team finished the Games with the overall result of 33 won medals (13 gold, 11 silver and 9 bronze medals) surpassing its previous Winter Olympics record of 11 gold medals, set at the 1994 Winter Games in Norway’s Lillehammer.
The 2014 Sochi Games were also the first Winter Olympics since 1952 when the Games’ hosting country won the highest overall number of awards as well as the biggest number of gold medals.