Olympic Spirit? Russia's Overshadowed Games

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/commentary-on-the-olympics-in-sochi-in-the-shadow-of-kiev-a-955292.html



This year's Winter Olympics were anything but a carefree celebration of sport. Even before the flame was lit, there were critical questions about the preparations for these games -- and then came the events in Kiev.

Olympic Spirit? Russia's Overshadowed Games
A Commentary by Peter Ahrens
February 24, 2014 – 12:39 PM

Last Thursday was a beautiful day in Sochi. As warm spring sun shone down on the Olympic Village, many visitors had settled at an outdoor café for a beer while others gathered around a mascot for a photo. In the Iceberg Skating Palace, figure skaters were dancing gracefully to the inspiring music of Tchaikovsky and Grieg.

But on the same day, almost 100 people lost their lives in Kiev, their corpses left lying on the streets or stacked up in a hotel lobby. The border to Ukraine is less than 600 kilometers (375 miles) from Sochi, which, for a country the size of Russia, is nothing. The violence was right next door.

From the very beginning, these games, which came to an end on Sunday, were anything but carefree. Many questioned the logic of choosing a subtropical seaside town to host the winter games and the preparations -- complete with expropriations of residents, incursions into a mountain nature reserve, the arrest and imprisonment of opposition activists and the horrendous, unprecedented price tag -- did little to silence the critics. It would have taken a miracle for these games to exude the unremitting joy of previous Olympics.

Sochi did, of course, have its moments: the final Olympic appearance of legendary skater Evgeni Plushenko; the emotional and intense men's hockey tournament; German luge dominance; the Russian cross-country sweep that gave the hosts the medal title; the hard-fought women's slalom race. There were certainly plenty of great Olympic performances.