Russia may be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, but many claim that the country not prepared for it.

This year’s Winter Olympics was the most expensive one to date, but it seems to be the least prepared one, according to mass media outlets. One can easily hop onto Google and find news articles converning problems encountered with the living situations in Sochi.

A 20-year-old Candian journalism student took it a step further. He set up a Twitter account called Sochi Problems, which capitalized on the situation in Sochi. In fact, it receives more followers then the official Olympic Twitter account. It compiles tweets from athletes getting stuck in their bathrooms to journalists having no light bulbs and yellow water. It appears that viewers are having more fun hearing about the insane living conditions than the actual games.

Sochi appeared to be a city that should have been ready for the Olympics.  It has been a resort town since the beginning of the Soviet Union. Lenin and Stalin visited it on  their personal vacations. The mountains are perfect for winter sports. When the games got going, there was already enough snow on the ground. There were said to be hotels and infrastructure there already. Yet the reports  from journalists make it seem that Sochi was a ghost town before the Olympics started.

To be fair to Russia, it only had seven years to turn the town into a city fit for thousands of spectators. Olympic villages that the athletes live in are no small structures. While Russia spent the most money preparing for the games, it went to many different things. I believe that one of the reasons for not-so-great hotels was the fact that the Russia government was more focused on other aspects of the Games.

Going into the Olympics, living conditions were the last thing on the minds of government officials. It seemed more people were paying attention to the threat of a terrorist attack or problems with gay rights abuses. Most people expected the media to focus on the anti-gay laws once they were in Sochi. Instead, the public hears about U.S. bobsledders getting stuck in the elevator.

The biggest issue I believed that this year’s Olympics had to face was terrorist threats. The most concerning threat came from the Black Widow group. Part of the security concerns came from the fact that Sochi is located next to a war zone. Many people did not attend just because of this threat. In fact, some athletes’ parents did not even attend the Games because they did not feel safe. 

Despite the constant fear of an attack, for the most part the attendees have felt safe at the Games. The Russian government stepped up their security measures. Every member going into any Olympic building or event is subjected to bag checks. This means every single person has no choice but to be search in order to go to the games. Since the opening, there has been no major attack in the area.

In fact there seems to be no major issue with the games running either. Other then a claim that the figure skating judges were not being honest, the games have ran smoothly. Most of the events are going on at the schedule time. There are no massive problems with any events. With the exception of its hotel problems, the running of the games has gone as well as Russia could hope.