Investors going for gold

As the Olympic flame burns in Beijing, the Russians are already looking ahead to their own Winter Olympics 
6 years from now in the resort of Sochi. Gold medals are what they are aiming to win, but raising the profile of the Black Sea resort 
– accompanied by 
a surge in local property values – will be the real prize Emil Górecki A substantial sum of around RUB 300 bln nearly USD 13 bln) has been pledged by the Russian public sector for investment in the 2014 Winter Olympics. The entire amount is to be injected into Sochi, with a population of 330,000, and the relatively small Krasnodar Krai region, with more than 5 mln inhabitants and Russia’s third most densely populated province. Shortly after he learned that his country had beaten Austria and South Korea to host the event, deputy-prime minister Alexander Zhukov announced that his government would provide generous funding for the Games. But even so, experts estimate that the even