2014 Winter Olympics - Sochi, Russia

[Haljackey 17,385]

I think it's time to start a thread for the 2014 Olympic winter games!

 

The opening ceremony is on February 6 and the games run from February 7 to February 23 (with the closing ceremony on the last day).

 

This will be the most expensive Olympic games ever, and not just for the winter games. A lot of the high cost is due to embezzlement and kickbacks by Putin. Some are calling this the Putin Games.

 

By the numbers (USD):

-Vancouver 2010: $12 billion (last winter games for comparison)

-Nagano 1998: $17.5 billion (most expensive winter games)

-Beijing 2008: $44 billion (most expensive summer games)

-Sochi 2014: $51 billion (estimate in October 2013, final cost unknown)

 

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Other tidbits of information to consider:

 

-There are a lot of safety concerns, and Russia is spending an arm and a couple legs on security. Their grip will be pretty tight in an effort to curb any violent demonstrations and acts of terrorism. This comes at a high price to the people of Sochi and tourists, as there may be a lot of spying and breaches of personal information. Visitors from around the world are being told by their governments that their privacy cannot be guaranteed.

 

-Russia's anty-gay law is controversial. Many have called a boycott of the games, and some countries have found one way or another to tell Russia they don't like it. There may be some protests about it during the games. Some wonder how Russia will act, especially if they are peaceful. Russia and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) have guaranteed all athletes that their sexual orientation will not be an issue during competition or for their stay in Sochi.

 

-Freedom of speech. The IOC states that the press has the right to free speech but Russia may think differently. Anyone who is not press better watch what they say and do.

 

-The weather. Sochi has been very warm and the conditions for nearby events are not ideal. I'm sure a lot of snow will be trucked in and/or artificially created but the warm temperatures do affect many events.

 

-The buildings. With less than 3 weeks to go many of the buildings are not finished and many wonder if they will be ready in time for the games and up to code.

 

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On a lighter note, the Jamaican bobsled team has qualified for the Olympics for the two-man competiton, but they may not have enough funding to travel to the games. A donation page has been set up to get them there.

 

Remind anyone of Cool Runnings?

[LexusInfernus 908]

Ah well, as far as the weather goes, thats always something that is not entirely predictable. Though they might have been better off going to SIberia

[AkemiAzula 280]

Precisely. Why Sochi? Siberia would have been a much more logical location for winter sports

[LexusInfernus 908]

Mountains. Siberia doesn't have a lot of mountains. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

A former CSIS deputy director is on record as saying if you must go to Sochi, get in, do your thing, get out.  He suggests no extra curricular activity of any kind.

[astronelson 339]

I fully expect something terrible to happen on a large scale there. Mark my words, this will not end well.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I really am at a loss as to why the IOC even considered the area.  Ill-considered bravado?  The only worse place I can think of is Aleppo.

[Haljackey 17,385]

I fully expect something terrible to happen on a large scale there. Mark my words, this will not end well.

 

I really don't want anything bad to happen. This is supposed to be about the athletes, Russia has turned it into politics.

 

Besides, with the amount of security there I hope anything 'terrible' is stopped before it actually gets terrible.

 

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What's your favorite winter event? Mine has to be the 4-man bobsled.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

As long as I can remember, except maybe the 1948 games, it has always been political.  People talk about Boycotts and so on.  If the Olympic movement were removed from the purview of fat cats and politicians things might be better, but then there might not be any games at all.  It is getting to be as bad as the (dis-)United Nations.

 

Clearly there needs to be an overhaul at the top of the IOC as well as most national Olympic organizations.  They've only given lip-service to the Olympic principles for decades now, and they are not even thinking of holding the games in a safe venue.  Sochi is the IOC's defiance of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement.  This is one bluff that might well be called.

[LexusInfernus 908]

I dunno, the recent attacks have only increased the security measures. And this is Putins pet project. I dont think hes gonna let anything happen to it. So you can be sure the area around Sochi is going to be choke full of guards. 

 

And I think any terrorist knows that, so why would they even bother? Its gonna be way to difficult to get in and succeed, so why bother? 

[AkemiAzula 280]

Because terrorists couldnt give a kopek about rationality and logic

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Mark has a point.  Don't expect fanatics to be rational.  If they really want to disrupt things, they will.  If I was running the IOC, about now I'd be talking to the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Mayor of Vancouver.

[LexusInfernus 908]

I do expect even fanatics to be somewhat rational in that they assess their chance of success before they attack. On top of that, it are cowards who attack targets of opportunity. A place that has half of the Russian army protecting it does not sound like a good target of opportunity to me and probably not to terrorists as well. 

 

But we will see. Could be that like the others they blow themselves up the moment they reach a security checkpoint. 

[AcmeSigns 97]

-The buildings. With less than 3 weeks to go many of the buildings are not finished and many wonder if they will be ready in time for the games and up to code.

Now that's funny. Code? Vas iss kode?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Good question.  Whose code?  Where is it defined?

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

I really am at a loss as to why the IOC even considered the area.  Ill-considered bravado?  The only worse place I can think of is Aleppo.

 

If you think that's mad then the IOC picking Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympics is just full-retard. Imagine hosting the Olympics a few hundred kilometers away from Chernobyl when the power plant's radiation leakage had not been fully contained, that's Fukushima- perhaps worse. But I really hope the Sochi Olympics don't become marred with any terrorism or any Munich-like event. As for the whole anti-gay propaganda law, give the Russians a break. They're still recovering from both WW2 and the ravages of a communist system, but in the last decade things have picked up for Russia and the Sochi Olympics seems like icing on the cake.

 

Let the Russians and their government have their moment of glory, and let's hope the West stops using this event as a means of dictating what Russia should or should not be doing. I'm sick of the West's hypocrisy and lest we forget it was Putin and the Russian government who prevented Syria becoming the ground zero of another world war.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Imagine wearing a dosimeter at the Tokyo Olympics.  If they haven't tamed that radiation by then, I don't understand the will of the Japanese.

[astronelson 339]

 

In the two weeks following the Fukushima accident, the extra radiation dose in Tokyo was equivalent to that received during one New York-LA flight (40 microsieverts). Two weeks in an average part of the exclusion zone (starting immediately after the accident) would put you at the EPA annual limit for a member of the public (1 millisievert), a radiation worker could stay there as long as they wanted and not hit their annual limit (50 millisieverts). 100 millisieverts in a year is the smallest dose linked to an increase in cancer risk.

 

Unless another accident occurs in the middle of the city, radiation will not be an issue at the Tokyo Olympics. Even with the incredibly strict regulations regarding permissible doses, it's barely a blip right now and will be even less then - the highly active isotopes are short-lived and decay quickly.

 

Figures sourced from here and the nuclear physics course I took, the data in the link has been sourced from the links at the bottom-left of the page.

 

Additionally, Chernobyl was by far the worse accident of the two. It's still worse there than at Fukushima (aside: there were two deaths as a result of the Fukushima accident - two crew members who went to inspect the damage caused by the earthquake who were killed by the tsunami).

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

In the two weeks following the Fukushima accident, the extra radiation dose in Tokyo was equivalent to that received during one New York-LA flight (40 microsieverts). Two weeks in an average part of the exclusion zone (starting immediately after the accident) would put you at the EPA annual limit for a member of the public (1 millisievert), a radiation worker could stay there as long as they wanted and not hit their annual limit (50 millisieverts). 100 millisieverts in a year is the smallest dose linked to an increase in cancer risk.

 

Unless another accident occurs in the middle of the city, radiation will not be an issue at the Tokyo Olympics. Even with the incredibly strict regulations regarding permissible doses, it's barely a blip right now and will be even less then - the highly active isotopes are short-lived and decay quickly.

 

Figures sourced from here and the nuclear physics course I took, the data in the link has been sourced from the links at the bottom-left of the page.

 

Additionally, Chernobyl was by far the worse accident of the two. It's still worse there than at Fukushima (aside: there were two deaths as a result of the Fukushima accident - two crew members who went to inspect the damage caused by the earthquake who were killed by the tsunami).

 

Even if there is little danger in Tokyo, I still say that governments and athletes should boycott the 2020 Olympics to send the Japanese government a clear message: stop covering up the extent of the disaster and start asking for whatever help is required to mitigate the radiation and radioactive compounds spewing out of Fukushima.

 

Radioactive water has been constantly flowing into the ocean ever since the start of the meltdowns, not only is the Pacific steadily being polluted and fish stocks are plummeting, but some of this water evaporates and is precipitated over the land. Finally you have the Sword of Damocles hanging over Japan, and that sword is none other the spent fuel rod pool of Fukushima reactor 4. There is an operation to remove all the fuel rods and the caskets which contain the fuel rods, there are two problems though.

 

The operation is taking place in a building which was totally wrecked in 2011;

 

 

 

Even now in 2014 the actual building is still very precarious, although a temporary structure has been erected around it, I can only imagine the extent of damage inside the reactor.

 

 

 

The other problem is that the original machinery to remove the fuel rods has either been damaged or buried under debris. So an already precarious operation is made even more so because if just one fuel rod is dropped then the radiation released will make it impossible to work both inside and outside the reactor. Not only would it be fatal to humans but even remote controlled robots would struggle from the intense radiation. Plus the caskets have been twisted in areas so how they're going to remove a fuel rod from a bent casket -- without the fuel rod snagging or breaking, or the entire casket disintegrating -- is beyond me.

 

This fuel rod removal operation is commencing all throughout this year and it is at the mercy of an earthquake or typhoon finishing off the building. But if the entire fuel rod assembly collapses then all the rods will catch fire and radioactive compounds will be blown everywhere. A large portion of Japan would have to be evacuated. Any time there is a strong earthquake or a typhoon approaching, the possibility of the fuel rod assembly collapses rears its ugly head. It's akin to Russian roulette and that is why I feel it was such a mistake awarding Japan the 2020 Olympics. More worryingly, during the hydrogen explosions which occurred in reactors 1,2 and 3, the explosions severely damaged the fuel rod pools/assemblies of each respective reactor, and these fuel rod pools are even harder to reach because the roof of all (except for reactor 2) these reactors has collapsed (and it ain't no simple matter of removing the broken roof because that could disturb the fuel rods and/or caskets).

 

Everyone is assuming that in six years time there will be no human error, or earthquake, or typhoon or unexpected phenomenon which could cause one or all of these fuel rod pools to collapse and burn. The Japanese government and Tepco are playing a VERY dangerous game with all their China Syndrome tactics. Given that all four reactors cores have melted, there are four very unstable fuel rod pools and a few hundred tons of contaminated water is flowing into the Pacific every day for the last three years, this is a disaster on the same magnitude of Chernobyl. I'm amazed that the Japanese government, Tepco and a whole ton of media outlets can just whitewash the whole thing, whilst claiming it's all under control and saying there is no danger to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

 

Over the next 5, 10, 20 and 50 years we'll be hearing more and more reports of rising cancer rates in Japan, fish species dying off in the Pacific, detection of more radiation hotspots and the MSM could suddenly bring a deluge of news regarding the actual situation if say the Tokyo Olympics were cancelled. It will seem that things have suddenly deteriorated when in reality the situation has remained the same, it's just that the facts are getting out.

 

Oh yes one more intriguing thing, it seems the Japanese government is clamping down on anyone who is trying to warn others about the scale of the Fukushima disaster. They just passed a state secret's act so if Fukushima radiation is really bad, well... You won't know about it, they won't know about it 'cos it's a secret and you get the idea. Of course government obfuscation has always been the best metric of how serious a long-term situation/event/disaster could be.

 

So just because it is safe NOW, doesn't mean it will be safe LATER!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

*sigh*  AFAIK a little radioactive Tritium leaks from the Pickering power reactor (CANDU) into Lake Ontario at Moore Point.  That didn't stop me nor many others from keeping a yacht at Frenchman's Bay Marina (about 100 metres away() for many years.  We don't glow in the dark.

 

People who speak of Boycotts and the Olympics in the same breath are those who would politicize the whole movement.  This is generally unacceptable under the Olympic Charter.

 

Do this to make them do that.  This is the kind of tit for tat foolishness that has kept the world in an uproar for millennia.

 

Japan has always been pretty tight-lipped about internal affairs, even Fukushima.  Politicians there are very concerned with loss of face.  If you think the Bushido code is gone, think again.  These people live in the ring of fire and manage to survive.

[Haljackey 17,385]

Getting back on topic, the Jamaican Bobsled team has raised enough funds to make it to the games!

 

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/help-the-jamaican-bobsled-team-get-to-sochi

 

http://www.jamaicaolympics.com/archives/7608#sthash.1Dcm35UO.dpbs

[UndercoverNinja12 176]

Getting back on topic, the Jamaican Bobsled team has raised enough funds to make it to the games!

 

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/help-the-jamaican-bobsled-team-get-to-sochi

 

http://www.jamaicaolympics.com/archives/7608#sthash.1Dcm35UO.dpbs

Stories like that are always great, people across the world unifying to see the best compete against the best! It's what the Olympics should be all about.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Let's hear it for a country with no snow.  Jamaica might win the bobsled gold, and that kind of is more than slightly ironic.

[Haljackey 17,385]

During Vancouver 2010 there was an alpine skier from Ghana who got more cheers than anyone else on the hill. His run was terrible, but it was awesome to see him compete.

 

...And it's not like they just stuck him there to represent a country, he actually qualified for the event, just like the Jamaicans.

[basty_goofy 24]

 

I really am at a loss as to why the IOC even considered the area.  Ill-considered bravado?  The only worse place I can think of is Aleppo.

 

If you think that's mad then the IOC picking Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympics is just full-retard. Imagine hosting the Olympics a few hundred kilometers away from Chernobyl when the power plant's radiation leakage had not been fully contained, that's Fukushima- perhaps worse. But I really hope the Sochi Olympics don't become marred with any terrorism or any Munich-like event. As for the whole anti-gay propaganda law, give the Russians a break. They're still recovering from both WW2 and the ravages of a communist system, but in the last decade things have picked up for Russia and the Sochi Olympics seems like icing on the cake.

 

No break should be given for the anti-gay law. Immoral is immoral is immoral. Eastern European countries like Romania, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, etc all went through the horrors of WW2 and communism (at the hands of Russia no less) and are all inching away slowly on the path of tolerance and acceptance.

There is no excuse. In fact excuses support this oppressive and toxic environment and help maintain it for a longer time.

 

Let the Russians and their government have their moment of glory, and let's hope the West stops using this event as a means of dictating what Russia should or should not be doing. I'm sick of the West's hypocrisy and lest we forget it was Putin and the Russian government who prevented Syria becoming the ground zero of another world war.

 

Buying into Putin's obvious PR stunt is laughable, especially considering that he backs the murderous regime of Assad.

[timmie 988]

Meanwhile, international laughter about twin toilets in Sochi.

 

Clearly, the so-called Civilization Process that happened in Europe in the early modern period (the transformation of table manners, bodily functions, speech,... by a gradual increase of the thresholds of shame and repugnance) has not been the same in Russia. Especially in Victorian times, the Civilization Process was strong: going to the toilet was increasingly seen as something dirty by the elites, excrements needed to be removed from the sight, the odour also had to be removed (people became more sensitive for bad odours), private toilets needed to be introduced (before this, going to the toilet was a public affair, like it still seems to be in Russia today), water-sluiced sewers were needed, speech needed to be cleaned up when talking about bodily functions,...

 

This process then expanded to ordinary people by coercion by the elites (they were regarded as dirty, morally and fysically) and gradually changed to internal coercion: shame. But clearly this process has not worked the same way in Russia, since apparently, it's not an odd thing to go to the toilet together.

 

(The introduction of the fork, our habits concerning sneezing, burping,... are part of this story too and saw a similar evolution.)

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I guess their budget is more propaganda than privacy.

[Haljackey 17,385]

I was reading about that earlier today: http://www.thehumorcolumnist.com/sochi-olympic-center-double-toilet-explained/

 

It seems like there will be no dividers/stalls between toilets. My guess is that they will be hastily thrown together at the 11tth hour after backlash but only in some bathrooms.

 

 

Or...

 

Maybe it's a safety concern? Think about it... Bathroom stalls provide privacy and a place where someone could assemble a bomb or something. Kind of sad if you ask me.

[Captain 32]

This will be the most expensive Olympic games ever, and not just for the winter games. A lot of the high cost is due to embezzlement and kickbacks by Putin. Some are calling this the Putin Games.

Omg! Are you serious? You ever been in the Russia? I'm here 25 years. Expensiveness of the Sochi Olympics is due not only the sports facilities. In Soviet Union Sochi was a thriving city. After collapse of the USSR and rebuilding to the western democracy and capitalism, Sochi was turned into a village. Now Sochi regained status a large and wealthiest city. This big budget was used to build hotels, railway stations for trains and ships, promenades, bus stops and stations, cable cars and much more.

Commuter rail station

Station for a local marine vessels

With marinas for motor and sail yachts. On picture is not the season. Usually there is difficult to find a place. (Yes, the "poor" russians sailing on vacation, just imagine)

This is new central train station. As you can see - nobody stolen his.

Just look what he was small and uncomfortable before.

Cable-stayed bridge. Around the world such bridges very much. But it was built near Sochi in the difficult conditions between two mountains.

And many, many more objects. I tryed to show simple objects - for everyday use. And as you can see from example images, these objects are not disposable. Half of the budget was invested in tourism infrastructure of surrounding towns - Novorossiysk, Krasnodar, Anapa, Gelendzhik, Tuapse, and so on.

Come visit Russia. There are very friendly people Please, don't believe politicians, believe us - ordinary people who live here and enjoy our lives. Yes, we haven't so all is great as we would like, a lot needs reforming. But we're working on this.

Personally, I'm very glad that at least through the Olympics, many foreigners will know about the Russian real truth. You have already fed up with your phrases "Putin dictator", gay bears and balalaika. Come and visit us. Better in the summer when it's warm weather and all around flowering.

Best wishes and Welcome!

[paeng 2,525]

Meanwhile, international laughter about twin toilets in Sochi.

 

Well, that's ultra-modern... here in Germany that is a trend for quite a while already in restaurants, clubs and discos - at least for the Ladies... Some guy started it as a test (for lack of space), and the girls just love it... they are called comm(unication)-cabinets... Go figure