Falling from Olympian heights

It might not be news to you, but this was the most expensive Olympiad ever, costing over USD 50 bln to prepare. The second most costly was Athens in 2004, which coming in at a much more modest USD 11.9 bln almost seems like a school sports day in comparison. A large portion of the cost of the Sochi games was incurred by the most expensive construction project in Russian history – a 50 km stretch of motorway and railway between Sochi and the Olympic skiing centres at Krasnaya Polyana. This has run up a bill of USD 9.4 bln. Twelve tunnels, 45 bridges and a railway line were built together with the road itself. In defence of the organisers, most of the new structures needed for the event had to be built from scratch. The building programme therefore saw the construction of the Olympic Park, the Olympic Village, a ski jump as well as skiing centres in the mountains with new ski-slopes. The announcement alone of all this investment was enough to utterly transform the local real estate