Sochi subdued in contrast to wild Vancouver
SOCHI, RUSSIA — Dead. That word aptly describes the atmosphere almost everywhere outside the Olympic Park and mountain venues at the Sochi Winter Games and especially in the city for which the quadrennial has been named.
Even on a gorgeous afternoon, with the sun blazing and the temperature rocketing up to an unwintry 17C, only a few hundred visitors and locals strolled the several-kilometre length of Sochi’s signature waterfront corniche.
One or two blocks back from the Black Sea there was barely a whiff of Olympic spirit. The only hint that the Games were taking place in the neighbourhood were the lanes reserved exclusively for the use of those vehicles, officials and journalists with the right accreditation.
The subdued mood on the deserted streets and promenades is in sharp contrast to the wild scenes in Vancouver four years ago, when hundreds of thousands of Canadians and international visitors spent two weeks enjoying raucous parties all over the city, but most memorably on Granville Street. Olympic fever also seemed to grip every corner of London during the Summer Games 18 months ago.
“It is not at all like Vancouver,” said Susan Richards of Whitehorse, who had travelled 12 time zones from the Yukon with two friends from Yellowknife to watch Canadian short track speedskater Michael Gilday.
“There are definitely a lot fewer people than we expected. Vancouver was more energetic than Sochi is. Sochi is very laid back. As someone coming from the Yukon, I really like this. It is quieter and calmer. There aren’t really a lot of people here.”
“Vancouver was another situation. They went crazy there,” said Zane Caca, who had travelled with a girlfriend to follow Latvia’s men’s hockey team and a Latvian medal hope in the skeleton event. “Each time is different. This time there are so few other fans. There are actually more police.”
Crowds in Vancouver in 2010 were biggest and rowdiest after dark. The opposite has been true in Sochi. The streets were so deserted the other night that only a handful of people saw a brilliant fireworks display over the harbour that was triggered to celebrate Russia’s first gold medal of the Games.
“These are the most sober Olympics ever,” joked venture capital specialist Vadim Romanov of St. Petersburg, who had come to the sub-tropical resort with his wife and young daughter to catch a few early events. “It’s so hard to even get a beer here.”
In a separate interview, Pole Karolina Jasieyko came up with the same example as Romanov when trying to describe the tepid atmosphere.
“It’s Russia and nobody is drinking!” she exclaimed.
One of the pleasant features at any Olympics is the chance to mix in the streets with athletes and coaches from all over the world. But no athletes from any country have yet ventured outside the two Olympic clusters or the Olympic villages. Or so passersby told me.
This is not to say those in Sochi have not been having fun. The atmosphere in the arenas and in the crowded finish areas at the mountain venues has been electric. Boisterous Norwegian crosscountry and Dutch speedskating fans have generated a great buzz. But for all that, unlike other Olympics there have not been many fans swapping pins even inside the Olympic Park.
There are several possible explanations why Sochi has not been seized by the same excitement as other Games, despite the dazzling facilities and keen competition. One is that the city is strung along 145 kilometres of coastline, with multiple small centres. The biggest of them, in what locals call Sochi, is about 20 kilometres from the nearest sporting event, which makes it hard to get a sense that the Games are taking place.
Security fears seem to have kept foreign visitors at home, at least according to brokers from the U.S. stuck with thousands of tickets to sell. Many Russian sports fans, meanwhile, have been scared away by the cost of a ticket, a bed and food, which can run up to $1,000 a day. On top of this, there is also an extreme shortage of decent lodgings.
Still, there can be no doubt that Russians are intensely interested in the Olympics and especially in the fortunes of Alexander Ovechkin and the men’s hockey team. A stream of emails indicate that they have been glued to their televisions and are as proud as they can be about what they have seen from Sochi. Preliminary television ratings strongly suggest that the Olympics will be a ratings bonanza for state television.
The most frequent explanation as to why Sochi was not agog over the Olympics was also the most enigmatic.
“This is Russia,” was how Svetlana Abramova of Ekaterinburg and several other Russians put it.