Tomorrow, the entire world will turn their attention towards Sochi to watch the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Sochi is a sub- tropical beach resort city in Russia on the coast of the Black Sea, and the games will be the first Olympics held in Russia since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
While these Olympics were intended to create positive publicity for Russia, it has been quite the opposite over the past year leading into the Winter Olympics.
The Sochi games have been criticized for their lack of tolerance for LGBTQ athletes and propaganda. Serious threats of terrorism have already been declared by rebel leaders, which have led to extensive security and police force in Sochi. Many participating American Olympic athletes have told their family members to stay behind, worried that their families will not be safe while at the games. Despite it all, Russia remains determined that the Olympic games will be a success, but this success comes with a hefty price tag of over $50 billion, according to a CNN report.
Once Sochi was selected as the host for the 2014 Olympic games, Russian president Vladimir Putin appointed himself as the general manager of the Sochi Olympics. Putin has spent the last six years transforming the games into his own personal project as he serves as the final say in development and spending decisions. He has put together a stellar infrastructure for Sochi through tight connections with construction company presidents, albeit for about $45 billion. All in all, the total cost of the games comes to about $51 billion.
This total tops the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, which according to a report from interpretermag.com, cost around $40 billion. But the Beijing Games also featured more than triple the amount of events, with 8,500 more athletes and 25 more venues than the Sochi Olympics. The per event costs of the Sochi Olympics comes to roughly $520 million as opposed to a mere $132 million of Beijing’s games. This is an outrageous amount of money to be spent, especially since Putin advised the International Olympic Committee that his country would only be spending an estimated $12 billion back in 2007. So what caused this massive Olympic sized total?
Well, $10 billion came directly from the Russian Government and another $4 billion came from private investors and this roughly reflects the estimate of $12 billion that Putin declared in 2007. This leaves about $40 billion to account for. A chunk of this comes from poorly executed construction attempts by unprofessional and lowly paid workers along with very poor geological conditions. For instance, the Olympic Village was subject to consistent flooding and had to be rebuilt multiple times according to officials and Putin’s insistence to spare no expense has led to less care about cost to local subcontractors and construction designers, much to the chagrin of Russian citizens who are paying for the endless ripping up of roads and ludicrous deliveries of steel and asphalt through helicopters. Other such problems have occurred such as the breakage of sewage lines but the most conspicuous Olympic waste was the construction of the ski jumping facility. Due to poor location and loose soil, the facility was delayed in construction and ended up costing five times as much than previously thought before finally being finished.
But even with these setbacks the total cost of the games should be no more than $20 billion.
The remaining $30 billion or so is unaccounted for and many people, including Gian-Franco Kasper, the president of the International Ski Federation and a Swiss member of the IOC, believe that this money lies in the multitudes of embezzlement and kickbacks, according to the Washington Times. But this corruption has not reached any Russian courts and the International Olympic Committee refuses to get involved, leading many to believe that some of the kickbacks went toward the IOC as well.
Adding this corruption to the extensive amounts of security being paid to protect the game gives you a sum of the most expensive Olympic games yet. Putin hopes that the infrastructure will lead to increased tourism in Sochi in the future after the Olympics but filling a multi-billion dollar hole will be very hard to do, and there are only so many stadiums and venues that become useful after the next twenty or so days. definitely deserve it. But in six months time, you will have to defend it. And we are all excited to see if you are up to the task.
Marcus Mitchell can be reached at marcus.mitchell@spartans.ut.edu.