Sochi
2014

DateFebruary 7 - February 23

CountryRussian Federation

Athletes2780

Teams88

Events98

About the Games

First Winter Games for Russia

The 2014 Olympic Winter Games were the first time that the Russian Federation hosted the Winter Games; the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. The host city, Sochi, has a population of 400,000 people and is situated in Krasnodar, which is the third largest region in Russia.

Two Clusters

The Games were organised in two clusters: a coastal cluster for ice events in Sochi, and a mountain cluster located in the Krasnaya Polyana Mountains. This made it one of the most compact Games ever, with around 30 minutes travel time from the coastal to mountain cluster.

Coastal Cluster

The Sochi Olympic Park was built along the Black Sea coast in the Imeretinskaya Valley, where all the ice venues—such as the Bolshoi Ice Palace, the Maly Ice Palace, the Olympic Oval, the Sochi Olympic Skating Centre, the Olympic Curling Centre—along with the Central Stadium, the Main Olympic Village, the International Broadcast Centre and Main Press Centre, had been built anew for the 2014 Games. The Park ensured a very compact concept with an average distance of 6km between the Olympic Village and the other coastal venues.

Mountain Cluster

The mountain cluster in Krasnaya Polyana was home to all the skiing and sliding sports. The mountain concept was, again, a very compact one, with only an average distance of 4km between the mountain sub-village and the venues. There was also a sub-media centre in the mountain cluster.

NOCs: 88 National Olympic Committees + 1 independent Olympic Participant, a new record

Athletes: A record number of 2,780 athletes were entered, more than 40 per cent of whom were women.

Tickets: More than 1.1 million tickets were sold.

Events: 98 titles awarded in 15 disciplines

Testing: 2,500 doping tests performed

Broadcasting: A record 102,000 hours of broadcasting on all platforms (television and digital), with 4.1 billion potential viewers

Social media: More than 2.2 million new followers on all platforms, and a total 7.7 million Facebook fans

First Time Participants

Six countries participated for the first time in the Olympic Winter Games: Malta, Paraguay, Timor Leste, Togo, Tonga and Zimbabwe.

New Events

Twelve new events were contested: team figure skating, luge relay, biathlon mixed relay, women’s ski jumping, snowboard and ski slopestyle (men and women), ski half-pipe (men and women) and snowboard parallel slalom (men and women).

Medals

Medals were won by athletes from 26 National Olympic Committees.

Before Sochi was Named Host

Seven cities, namely Sochi (Russian Federation), Salzburg (Austria), Jaca (Spain), Almaty (Kazakhstan), PyeongChang (Republic of Korea), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Borjomi (Georgia)—in the order of drawing of lots—initially submitted applications to host the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.

Narrowing Down the Candidates

Based on the report by a working group, three of the seven cities were unanimously selected by the IOC’s Executive Board as Candidate Cities at its meeting on 22 June 2006: Sochi (Russian Federation), Salzburg (Austria), PyeongChang (Republic of Korea).

The Election of Sochi

Sochi was elected on 4 July 2007 by the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at the 119th Session in Guatemala City. Sochi was elected in the second round with 51 votes, compared to PyeongChang’s 47.