Sochi to get best-ever Winter Olympic Village

Krasnaya Polyana: The Olympic villages being built for Sochi 2014 competitors will be the best-ever at a Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee`s chief inspector said Thursday.

Jean-Claude Killy has spent the last three days visiting Olympic facilities in and around the southern city, and said he was confident everything was on the right track for Russia`s first Winter Games. "The athletes will be in excellent surroundings," he said of the athlete accommodation. "In my view, these will be the best conditions, compared to other Winter Olympics. Here there are three Olympic villages located in direct proximity to one another." One village is the coastal cluster of skating and curling facilities, with the other two in the mountains. More broadly, Sochi organisers should be able to handle the large volume of work remaining, Killy said. "Of course, there`s a lot left to do, but I`m sure everything will be excellent." Last month, Games organisers said the sporting infrastructure was 70 percent ready. Killy, who heads the IOC`s coordination commission for Sochi2014, has also visited the ski jumping and bobsled facilities in the mountains and a major local train junction. Organizing committee head Dmitry Chernyshenko, in a statement issued by the IOC, said the 47 test events planned for the upcoming winter sport season would be "the most robust test event schedule in the history of the Winter Games". Sochi is one of Russia`s biggest resort cities, and will inherit world-class tourism infrastructure when the Winter Games finish, Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak said. The city is to be left with 27,000 new hotel rooms, he said. "In this way, the city will receive modern tourist infrastructure," he said while accompanying Killy at the Krasnaya Polyana winter sports centre. IANS