Experience the Russian Riviera
Food safety authorities want to ensure that following popular in Russia food items are not sold in Sochi during Olympic and Paralympic Games next year.
Within next two hours Russia will pick the official mascot for the Olympic Games 2014!
Concert, with nationwide phone, SMS, and internet poll in the end, I guess, has already been started. If you’re in Russia, you can watch it live at http://itv.1tv.ru/. I’m not sure you’ll be able to see it if you’re outside of Russia. Trying won’t hurt :-)
Here’s what we’re choosing from:
Except for left-most — Uncle Frost. Russia has decided to pull him from the poll because International Olympic Committee will have all rights for the mascot. Uncle Frost is Russia’s Santa, so it would cause some issues in the future.
Anyway, you can find more information and pictures at talisman.sochi2014.com
Which one would vote for?
Sochi native Alexey Voevoda (Алексей Воевода), and his teammate Alexandr Zubkov won Olympic bronze medal yesterday in two-man bobsleigh event in Vancouver!
This is Alexey’s second Olympic medal – he won silver in the four-man bobsleigh event at the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin.
Congratulation Alexey!
Alexey Voevoda
Vladimir Putin, working as a prime minister of Russia these days, said today during live video call with Vancouver, where the Olympic Games will take off in a couple of days, that preparations for the next Olympic Games (to be hosted in Sochi, Russia) have already attracted 500 billion rubles ($16.5 billion US). He also confirmed that so far we are on time financing and time vise.
A nationwide referendum will be held in Russia to choose a symbol for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee President Dmitry Chernyshenko said.
“As for choosing an Olympic mascot, it will be done three years before the event in compliance with the rules. A mascot will be selected through a nationwide referendum. We will ask the entire country to choose an image that will symbolize the Sochi Olympic Games,” Chernyshenko said at a presentation of the event’s brand on Tuesday.
- Interfax
Official Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games Logo
The presentation of logo on the Red Square wasn’t canceled after all! The live coverage was, and the press conference where the new logo will be presented to the World was move to today, Tuesday December 1st (11am Moscow time). But the concert and presentation did go ahead. And the Official Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games Logo is what was leaked earlier – text “sochi.ru 2014″. Here are a couple of pictures from the event:
Source: nl.livejournal.com, you can find more photos from the concert there.
I guess now we just have to wait for a mascot. Bear.ru ? :o)
update: yet more photos are available here.
update 2: Sochi2014.com design has been updated fir the new brand. Official explanation of the logo: Read the rest of this entry »
I feel fairly certain, that the following is a real official Olympic logo for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games that will be presented this upcoming Monday.
That’s right, it’s what you see – “sochi.ru 2014″ painted with color of the Russian flag, plus the Olympic rings. Stop for a moment before reading further and look at it: how do you feel about it? Do you like it?
Why I think this is it? I might still be wrong about this, but a few things here and there come together:
For some time now officials hinted that we’ll see something new, exciting and modern. And on November 25th, five days before the logo officially announced, Russian «Vedomosty» newspaper leaked this blurry photo of the logo. According to the article the point of this design is to promote Sochi, Russia and to tie Sochi to Russia in people’s mind. Love it or hate it you’ll probably agree that this design will probably help to reach this goal. In addition, from personal experience, many people in Eastern European – Poles, Slovaks, and Czechs I’ve talked to – who know about Sochi, think it is part of Georgia, which has never been the case. This idea of using even logo to “advertise” Russia goes along the line with the government’s position of getting the most out of money they’ve spend, and with spending a lot of money in recent years to improve the view of Russia in the world (like English language news channel, the use of top branding agencies, etc. – things that many other developed countries do, to be fair).
Another thing that will be unique about the logo is that the official sponsors will be allowed to use their corporate colors on the logotype.
Vedomosti sources claim the logo design is by Interbrand (here’s their Imagining the new Russia article), and no certain info on compensation for logo design. Though they quote design experts putting the price tag in the $600 000 – $1 000 000 million range.
And what do you think they should do to Sochi.ru domain name after the Olympics?
Previous articles on this topic:
The word out is Sochi 2014 logo is scheduled to be unveiled in the great deal of pomposity on November 30 in Moscow – the Red Square, a concert, etc.
Lenta.ru, Russia’s largest online news site, picked up on a blog post today, with another version of the logo. I don’t know why they started the speculation that this is the logotype that will be presented in Moscow next week, I don’t see where these rumors come from (upd: there’s a photo circulating online of this logo being presented somewhere). In any event, it’s pretty, so here it is for your viewing pleasure:
By the year 2010 approximately 1000 families will be relocated due to the Olympic construction development. Over 2500 hectares of land will be bought out from private owners for Olympic projects in Imeritinskaya Valley, Krasnaya Polyana, Vesyoloe village as well as Khosta and Central districts. Central district is affected by road infrastructure project.
- information from Vice Minister of Russia Dmitry Kozak via Interfax and Lenta.ru
Main Stadium
The global design practice Populous is delighted to announce today that it has been selected by the State Corporation ‘Olympstroy’ to design the main stadium for the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia.
Populous has also designed the master plan and overlay plan for competition and non-competition venues and facilities, and now adds designing the main 40,000 seat stadium to their expanding role on the 2014 Games. Populous is joined in the design consortium by Russian contractor Engeocom, and Botta Management.
“The main stadium design, in addition to the venue overlay plan we have prepared for the 2014 Games, delivers a wonderful vision for the winter Olympics, and a lasting sustainable legacy for Sochi. Its sweeping form responds to both its coastal location and mountainous backdrop, whilst its crystalline skin engages with its surroundings by day, and provides an iconic representation of the colour and spectacle of the games when illuminated at night. We are proud to be involved on such a level with Olympstroy,” said John Barrow, Populous senior principal.
This is the 25th year of Populous’ involvement in Olympic and Paralympic Games, and we are now the first design practice to have been officially appointed for the design of two Olympic Stadiums at one time. With Populous being the architects responsible for the main Stadium and venues overlay for the London 2012 Games, designing for Sochi 2014 ensures the continuation of the practice’s unrivalled experience in Olympic event planning and venue design. Each of these stadiums reflects new standards for Olympic sustainability initiatives.
Source: populous.com
A project of the central Olympic stadium – stadium where opening and closing ceremonies will take place, as well as many medal ceremonies – has been finally selected few days ago. The winner of the tender is a group of companies which includes «Mosproject-4», Russia (architecture design), Populous, USA (architecture design), Botta Management Group, Switzerland (construction management), «ENGEOCOM Association» CJSC, Russia (construction).
The stadium must be completed by the end of first quarter of year 2013. After the Olympics it will be used to host football games and comply with all FIFA regulations.
Below are a few renderings from icube.ru which list «Mosproject-4» as a client, so, I guess, we’re looking at what future stadium will look like.
More renderings: Read the rest of this entry »
Organizing committee of the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games of 2014 in Sochi has launched official team blog at blogs.sochi2014.ru … but it’s only in Russian, at least for now.
Looking at the dates it appears they’ve been giving it a thought since May, but revived the idea only now, in September. The announcement was posted yesterday.
The posting is for the officials only – there already are a few posts about marketing, environments, finance, etc. But you can comment, and the best thing is they do reply! You have to register, though, or use one of your existing OpenID accounts (if you’re registered at Google, Facebook, Yahoo (must enable first, though) – you have one).
I’m glad they finally did this, and hope they don’t run out of steam blogging and responding when more people start visiting.
Oh, and it runs on WordPress too! :-)
Russia’s Sberbank, which was earlier selected as an official partner of Olympics in Sochi, is holding public competition for the best Sochi 2014 credit card design. The main prize: a trip to Vancouver in February 2010
The official website for the competition is sochi-card.ru
Unfortunately for most of the visitors of this blog the competition is open to Russian citizens only. If you are eligible you can read rules of participation (in Russian) here. But, luckily for those who have any skills, you’ve got a pretty good chance, ’cause most of the designs submeted by now look more like kindergarten drawings.
Here are a few of the ones I personally liked. You can see them all in the official gallery.
Do you like any of those designs?
75 000 construction workers will be working on Olympic projects in 2010-2011 — this is the estimate from Dmitry Kozak, Vice Prime-Minister of Russia responsible for overseeing Olympics preparations. RIA Novosti also quotes him saying that there are no plans to specifically involve migrant workers, all work places should be filled via competitive transparent tenders.
According to him there are only 299 foreign workers are currently working on Olympic construction projects out of around 11 000 people working there today.
About a week ago domain name Sochi.ru – which hosted popular city portal with forums, classifieds, events calendar, news, etc. – was transferred to Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014″.
Why and how this happened is a bit of a mystery. Originally, on August 19, an announcement was posted on the website that the popular portal will move to a new domain – Sochi.com, and included statement that “by the order of the Government of the Russian Federation administration of domain name Sochi.ru goes over to the Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014″”… but later that sentence was removed from the announcement.
Neither Organizing Committee nor previous owner commented this to the media. Most news agencies quoted head of PR of the Ru-Center, .RU’s official domain names registration center, mentioning the “Olympic Law”, which basically makes anything with Sochi Olympics logo and other Olympics-related symbols (and that includes domain names) property of the Organizing Committee. However, not only that makes no sense, since Sochi.com is not much different from Sochi.ru in this respect, but also only combinations of “Sochi” and “2014″ fall under that law — this was discussed and explained at the time when this law came into effect.
But this is a done deal – WHOIS info already shows “Organizing Committee “Sochi 2014″” as Sochi.ru’s registrant, and the copy of the original portal already spinning at the Sochi.com. According to the original announcement, anyone who has @sochi.ru email address and all third level domains will exist until the end of this year.
I wonder what project will spin at this address next.
