The new airport in Sochi received its first guest of honor a couple of days before the visit of the IOC Evaluation Commission. German Gref flew to the general run of the presentation. The Serbian builder Dragan, who works at the airport, looked thoughtfully at the landing plane. Finally he sighed and for some reason revealed a secret: "They put a decommissioned Tu-154 at the building, so that it looked like an operating airport." Dragan had been preparing for his acting debut for several days: the builders were told that they would be dressed and given out empty bags by the commission's arrival, "they would force them to portray passengers."
Serb quickly realized that he got the role in the crowd. They entrusted the performance to the Bid Committee with the capital's prima - investors and politicians who played a performance on how large business projects are being implemented in Russia with the participation of the state. The decorations were not finished Olympic objects, but their plastic layouts. But most importantly, a soloist was released to high-ranking Olympic spectators: Vladimir Putin personally appeared on the stage as a guest star. His demonstration of skiing and a confidential conversation with representatives of the IOC should, according to the host side, look more convincing than the already built ski resorts and ice rinks by competitors - Austrians and Koreans.
It seemed that contrary to the customary practice of the Olympic movement, Sochi was not going to use its application to rebuild all the facilities, regardless of the result, and thereby earn a profit for the city and private investors. But how else, if investors are mostly not private, and certainly they are not free to choose business plans?
OBJECTS OF BARBARA
German Gref - the head of the Ministry of Economic Development, responsible for the Sochi application from the government - was generally pleased with the city. He clarified the details - for example, he did not like the color of the jackets of those who met children at the airport. Gref called back the head of the National Olympic Committee, Leonid Tyagachev, and easily said, without embarrassing anyone: "The blue ones are nothing, but the green ones look very gloomy."
In another place, Gref did not like the blue color anymore - on a huge plasma screen in one of the pavilions with mock-ups of future Olympic venues. There Gref discovered a transparent roof - it seems to have caused the minister's biggest discontent. “When I installed plasma at home, the first thing I did was prepare the room - darkened it. Nobody took care of this, ”Gref said to the city officials.
There were other shortcomings - for example, felled trees were lying around the new road (“If we clean the roads like this, then we do everything else like barbarians,” Gref noted). The new pavilion, built at the foot of the mountain, was not fenced from the descent in any way - children-skiers could easily crash into it (“Do you think with a head?” The minister asked the attendants). Gref’s emotions were overwhelmed: for example, he asked several times to name “the person who was responsible for this,” and once he directly asked: “Who ate the money?”
But, having chastised everyone and everything, the minister did not forget about his thanks for the preparation. He, like the future commission, traveled “around the objects”: in the middle of the snow-capped mountains, pavilions were built on the site of the future ski and bobsleigh tracks, and plastic mock-ups were placed inside. Others aroused special pride of the creators: for example, models of skating and hockey complexes in the Imereti Valley or the same “Russian Riviera”. “A good layout, seventy meters high!” They said around.
“WELL, GO GO TO SPEECH?”
All Sochi civil servants during the visit, the commission was allowed to go home. And so that they did not decide to spend an extraordinary vacation in Krasnaya Polyana - the main Olympic facility in the mountains - most gas stations were closed in the city. All points of trade in famous home-made wine turned off a few weeks before the audit. Children at the airport were dressed in blue, as Gref ordered, and the airport was surrounded by large advertising posters - 5-meter-high heroes of Russian sports covered the walls of the only object that had not yet been tiled.
One of the Newsweek correspondents flew in the same plane with the evaluation committee, but he was not lucky: the experts got their luggage faster, and immediately after their departure, life at the airport again froze. They didn’t let us into the toilet - "nothing works yet."
The members of the commission simply slept for the first two days - they flew to Sochi from Korean Pyeongchang, another applicant for hosting the 2014 Games, and after such a road, in the words of one sports functionary, "they were completely insane."
On the third day of the IOC experts who had fallen asleep, heavy artillery was waiting - even before they saw most of the models, Vladimir Putin met with them. Then he appeared at a briefing, where representatives of the bid committee presented the draft Olympics to reporters. Speakers were Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, Minister Gref and English expert Jan Wiley, Director of Mace Ltd (this company analyzed the possibilities of the London 2012 Olympic bid). Speakers referred to graphs and numbers; Wiley praised Russia's chances as “real.”
After the Englishman spoke, silence reigned in the hall. The correspondent of Newsweek heard how, behind his back, the Russian president asked someone: “Well, should I speak?” The president’s speech was short, but the only one that broke the applause. “We will not spend this money on missiles, military aircraft or tanks, we will spend it on people of the whole world extending a hand of friendship to each other,” he said, as if there had not recently been his Munich speech, which was already called the “announcement of the cool war "to the West.
“COMPLETELY SERIOUS GUARANTEE”
Representatives of the bid committee did not hesitate to say that Putin is our main weapon.
The competitors of the Russians - Koreans and Austrians - showed the evaluation committee not the layouts, but the finished buildings. “Salzburg is the best prepared,” says Victoria Voskanyan, general director of the Sportorta sports agency. “They haven’t just built a bobsleigh track, everything else is there.” Korea, too, presented almost all the facilities to the commission: for the second time, they claimed the Olympics, losing four years to Canadian Vancouver.
But the chances of competitors from this do not get higher. The head of Rossport, Vyacheslav Fetisov, in an interview with Newsweek correspondent generally expressed a paradoxical idea: they say, "the lack of finished facilities as of today is our plus." Fetisov’s logic is simple: new facilities are always better than old ones, and Putin is a “quite serious guarantee” that they will be built on time.
However, according to a source from the Application Commission, the visit of the current delegation of experts was only a “formal reason” for Putin. Russian officials are confident that the evaluation committee does not play a decisive role in determining the capital of the future Olympics - this is a "political decision."
In addition, there is a queue for the Olympics, the source adds: "Korea has strong positions in this sense (has long been on the waiting list), and Salzburg, on the contrary, is weak: the last winter Olympics was held in Europe." The EU, according to experts, is not so attractive for multinational companies, sponsors of the Olympics. “There they already mastered everything that could be mastered,” Voskanyan believes. “Russia has an advantage in this sense.”
CHRISTMAS AT HOMELAND
Sochi is proud of Putin’s role in the application - he not only “gives guarantees”, but also shows a built vertical of power, working with all its might for the Olympics. Of the $ 12 billion budget for future games, only $ 7.5 billion is purely state-owned. So Sochi 2014 is a beloved by the PPP authorities: private-state partnership.
The main ski run - Rosa Khutor in Krasnaya Polyana - is being built by Interros by Vladimir Potanin. 4 years ago, long before the “Olympic” idea, the oligarch rented land here for a period of 49 years. True, the first three years it did not go: Potanin was not given the go-ahead for the construction of environmentalists, the local authorities were forced to rebuild the route and did not want to bring communications to it - federal.
A year ago, things got more fun: along with the idea of holding the Olympics, the government adopted a program to develop Sochi as a winter resort (a reasonable decision: Sochi hotels are almost empty in winter). By the time the federal commission’s appraisal commission visited, the road to Rosa was finally built, the very one on which Gref noticed the felled trees.
But despite the imperfections, “Rose” in Sochi’s application now appears as a trump card - on Potanin’s mountain it will be possible to hold competitions in all types of alpine skiing at once. Vladimir Putin calls this mountain "unique." True, Potanin will have to pay extra for uniqueness. According to a source at Interros, Rosa’s initial estimate was $ 150 million, but if she was prepared for the Olympics, she would have to spend $ 300 million. “The social venture turned out to be pure water from a commercial venture,” the source adds. Potanin himself in an interview with Newsweek said that now the payback of his project "will be long and profitability low."
Potanin has to console himself with patriotic motives: “For the time being I celebrate my birthday and Christmas in Courchevel. But with pleasure I would celebrate it at home. And so I'm building a resort for myself. The blacksmith of his own happiness. "
SMITHS OF OUR HAPPINESS
In the vicinity of Potanin's Rosa, several more ski slopes are being built. Other "smiths of happiness" were more fortunate - their mountains are not "unique", they are building resorts not for the upcoming Olympics, but still for business. “We are all terribly happy,” one of the owners told Newsweek. “Even if Sochi does not give the Olympics, modern transport flows will still let us down, the electricity will stop going out, and the city will get good PR.”
A Newsweek correspondent visited the Mountain Carousel, a ski resort to be built next to Rosa. This complex, financed by the National Business Bank, will be more than Potaninsky and, upon reaching its design capacity, will be able to serve up to 12,000 people a day (Rosa - only 9,000). The carousel is designed by the famous German architect Matias Kolbekker, the French Poma is building the lifts, the total cost of the facility is $ 150 million, and the payback period, according to the deputy chairman of the bank Magomet Bilalov, is 7 years. Everything is as rosy as Potanin’s before the Olympics. “If Sochi loses the bid, then nothing bad will happen to us,” he admitted to Newsweek.
The government has just in case prepared a retreat plan - according to Gref, the government money will be spent anyway (just in case of loss it will be half as much). However, who can guarantee that in case of defeat the authorities will not cool at all in winter Sochi?
True, the city and in case of victory will most likely develop as an internal Russian resort. Experts acknowledge that the flow of foreign tourists to Russia is unlikely to ever be significantly greater than the current one.
And the people of Sochi are no longer happy that their city got involved in this venture. There were terrible traffic jams during the days of the evaluation committee’s visit to Sochi. Taxi drivers continually complained about "this muddy village." When a Newsweek correspondent in response told them from the words of Fetisov and Gref plans for grandiose construction projects - an easy subway, a new ring road, etc. - the drivers began to heartily honk and curse.
Chermen DZGOEV, Alexander MITYAEV