Russia has summed up the preliminary results of its first ever Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. They received high marks from the IOC, IPC, international sports federations, national Olympic and Paralympic Committees of the participating countries, athletes, and journalists. On a wide range of measures, these Games became record-breaking, attracted unprecedented interest from spectators and the media, and the entire country was involved in their preparation and staging.
Games organizers successfully fulfilled all obligations of the Sochi 2014 Bid Book. The basic ideas of the bid campaign came to life, that an innovative Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games would express the character of the new Russia and bring sustainable positive changes that inspire the whole world. Thanks to the Games, Russia entered the top three most influential sports powers in 2012 and received the status of leader of the sports world for the period 2013-2018, according to the influential Olympic website Sportcal.
Preparations for the first "white" Olympics in Russian history had an enormous effect on the region hosting the Games. Thanks to these preparations, Sochi has already transformed from a summer resort popular among Russians into a year-round world-class resort - in recent years the number of foreign tourists here has increased more than 2.5 times.
Games management
IOC President Thomas Bach called the Olympic Games in Sochi excellent in terms of its organization. This was largely achieved thanks to the creation of an effective Games management system under the supervision of the State Commission, which is led by Dmitry Kozak, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. Its core was comprised of the Organizing Committee and 7 headquarters (on transportation, energy, construction, the media, protocol, security, plus peripheral headquarter). To improve the operational readiness of the Games, 73 test sporting events were held - this was the most extensive test events program in Winter Games history.
Popularity
The Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee sold more than 1.1 million tickets to the Olympic Games, and there wasn't a single case of counterfeiting. Fans from 126 countries became guests of Sochi. In total, more than 2,859 athletes from 88 countries arrived in Sochi, winning a record 98 sets of medals.
The Sochi Games were trasmitted by 464 channels around the world — almost twice as mush as was viewed during the previous Winter Games in Vancouver. 2 billion people (200 million more than in Vancouver) watched television broadcasts of the Olympic Games at least 1 minute.
The Sochi Games became the first “digital” winter Games, showed the record interest of social networks users. Number of #Sochi2014 hashtag references has exceeded the population of the earth twice and the total number of responses on the Games in social networks — 13 billion. The total volume of the Olympic Internet traffic amounted to more than 1 petabyte.
Marketing
Thanks to the unprecedented support of the world famous international and Russian companies — leaders in their industries — the total amount of income from the Sochi 2014 Marketing Program exceeded $ 1.3 billion which more than 3 times exceeds the liabilities of the Bid Book. This allowed the organizers of the Games in Sochi to fund their staging by 80% from non-budgetary sources.
Paralympic Games
The IPC President sir Philip Craven named in his turn the first Russian Paralympic Winter Games the most successful in the history. 547 paralympians from 45 countries took part in them. For nine competition days 72 sets of medals were contested in five Paralympic sports. 325,000 tickets to the competitions were sold.
In Russia, the Paralympic Games were televised as much as possible - Russian TV channels broadcast a total of 180 hours.
Games Legacy
Games Legacy is here today. Having been in preparation for the Games Russia has gained fundamental material and intangible legacy.
15 state-of-the-art sports venues have been built for the Games. They will form the base of a unique sport complex comprising a few Ice arenas, alpine and bobsleigh tracks, ski jumps with all the necessary infrastructure, 4 alpine resorts with the total length of tracks of 150 km.
For the Paralympic Games over 1,400 city facilities in Sochi have been made accessible and recognized as such. Over the time span of 2006-2011 the number of people with impairment involved in sports has tripled. Around 200 cities in Russia are taking over the Sochi experience on barrier-free environment, which ensures better social integration of people with impairment across the country.
One of the key elements of the Games Legacy is the Volunteer program. 26 volunteer centers in 14 regions of the Russian Federation trained 25,000 volunteers, which is 25% more than that of the Games in Vancouver. Only one out of 10 applicants has become a volunteer of the Sochi Games.
Games records
As a part of the Cultural Olympic Games more than 3,000 cultural events were organized with over 100,000 performers involved and 4 mln spectators attended.
The Olympic Broadcasting Services produced more than 1,300 hours of live international programs, including 456 hours of news stories. In doing so, broadcasts of the XXII Olympic Winter Games were shown in 159 countries, and the Paralympic Winter Games - in 76 countries. The total TV audience of the Sochi Games exceeded 3.5 billion people.
The XXII Olympic Winter Games were preceded by a record-breaking Olympic Torch Relay. At a distance of 65,000 km, the relay was 1.5 times the length of the Earth's equator. The Paralympic Torch Relay also made history. For the first time, its international segment was held in the birthplace of the Paralympic Games, the city of Stoke Mandeville, England. This stage will become mandatory for all future Games.
During the XXII Olympic Winter Games, 212 competitions were held and a record 98 sets of medals were awarded. This was a result of the addition of 12 new competitions to the Olympic program, including in biathlon, luge, figure skating, freestyle, snowboard, and ski jumping.
During the XXII Olympic Winter Games, the official website
http://www.sochi2014.com/en was visited by more than 52 million users, which in total resulted in 128 million visits and 635 million page views. On average, a user viewed 5 pages on the website on each visit, and a visit lasted on average 5 minutes.