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"The Emcees Congratulate (or…) Everyone on the Choice of Sochi as the Capital of the Winter Olympic Games. They Announce Bilan."
// The Scene in Sochi on the Eve of Victory
All day yesterday, the residents of the Russian city of Sochi awaited the outcome of the final International Olympic Committee vote with fading hearts, and Kommersant correspondent Mikhail Zygar waited with them.
It looked like a holiday on the way from the airport to the center of Sochi: the road was lined with ranks of policemen in smart white uniform shirts. Unfortunately, they were also blocking the road, leaving it unclear as to how to get from Adler airport to Sochi.
"Putin hasn't have arrived from Guatemala already, has he?" asked the taxi driver with a note of horror in his voice. "Otherwise they wouldn't close the road."
I tried to reassure him that the president wouldn't have been able to fly to Sochi that quickly.
We took a detour, but once we arrived in the center of town, all of the roads turned out to be snarled with traffic jams.
The radio broadcast from Moscow kept endlessly repeating that thousands of people were gathered in Sochi's central square. But there was almost no one out on the sidewalks.
"Will we win?" I asked.
"If we gave a bribe, that means we'll win," answered my driver without thinking.
"What do you mean, a bribe?"
"Well, why else would Putin go to that dark continent?"
"And without a bribe we don't have a chance?"
"What are you talking about? They turn off our electricity in the winter," frowned the taxi driver. A few blocks from the central square, I had to get out of the cab and go on foot.
"Am I going the right way?" I asked a woman carrying two bags.
"Of course. Just keep going, they're been practicing there for five days already. Both artists and magicians."
" Are you going?"
"I've already taken a look at how they're preparing. It's pretty weak. If we want to be on a worldwide level, we need to build everything. Both houses and people! If they just looked each other in the eye, maybe they could cooperate better. I've done that myself, so I know what I'm talking about."
"What have you done? Organized the Olympics?" I wondered aloud.
"No, no, I'm talking about the girls with the white ribbons. They have some kind of routine going on that might work, except that they're waving them all out of synch. How can they do that? If the Olympics were to open tomorrow, what are they going to do, wave like that?"
"That bad, huh?"
"Well, 80 out of 100. They'll learn," she concluded kindly.
Not everyone was being let onto the square, which was already mostly full with the aforementioned young ladies and gentlemen who were carrying their white ribbons. They were sitting directly across from an identical contingent of youths who were strung out on the staircase of the Sochi Winter Theater. The two groups looked at each other, while ordinary citizens standing at the fringes of the scene looked perplexedly at the young people sitting on the pavement and on the stairs.
"I have nothing recorded here! There's nothing here! Silence!" cried the sound operator in horror. Nevertheless, the performers proved able to begin waving their ribbons even without music. Then the sound operator found a CD with the Olympic hymn. At around 7 o'clock that evening, the face of Vladimir Putin appeared on the monitor. There was no sound, however. He open his mouth in time with the hymn about the "noble Games."
"What, they're not going to broadcast the Russian presentation with sound?" I asked the emcee, Dmitry Guberniyev. He looked down his nose at me over his sunglasses.
"They're already broadcasting it," he said.
"But I don't hear anything," I replied.
"They're translating it on the Sport channel."
"And on the square?"
"What's the matter with you – can't you see there's a concert there?!" he exclaimed irritatedly.
The hymn played a few more times. On the monitor, Vladimir Putin opened and closed his mouth, while the girls and boys beneath him waved their ribbons.
"If the international community wants to play a dirty trick on us, of course they'll give us the Olympics to host," said Irina, a Muscovite who owns a house in Krasnaya Polyana and an apartment in Sochi. "Just take a look at what's going on in town. With the roads, with the airport, with everything. It's just a nightmare. You can't build a new town in seven years. I've dealt a lot with local officials. They've already swiped all the money that they could. So for them, the optimal [scenario] would be for Sochi to lose. Victory would be a terrible shock for them. No one's ready. I myself, for example, would be happy if the Olympics were held in Sochi. But that's not realistic."
"Irina, you have a house in Krasnaya Polyana. Aren't you afraid that during the preparations for the Olympics someone will decide that a bobsled run needs to be built there?"
"I'm a pretty calm person. I know that if they want to take it away, they'll take it away. I've already spent six years trying to get a property deed for that house. First there was some kind of red tape, and then came the talk of the Olympics, and they stopped registering [deeds]."
The crowd suddenly shrieked. I turned around, thinking that Vladimir Putin had done something unbelievable on the monitor. But it turned out that emcee Olga Shelest had announced that Dima Bilan would be playing on the square that evening.
A group of Korean taekwondo masters were called to the stage to demonstrate that "sport is peace." The crowd was sincerely happy, clapping at all of their feats and apparently not noticing that Vladimir Putin had disappeared from the monitor.
It soon turned out that the Koreans couldn't perform a single complicated move. They fell, missed, and couldn't break even thin boards with their legs or heads. The residents of Sochi didn't gloat at all, however.
"Do you think that Sochi's bid has already increased the popularity of sport in our country? Everyone who thinks so, raise your hands," said Dmitry Guberniyev, addressing the crowd. "And who doesn't think so?"
Approximately a third of the square put their hands up in an unexpectedly honest move.
"Have you no shame? Why have you come to this square, then?" screeched the Moscow television personality at the assembled Sochi residents. They were quiet. The boys and girls continued to wave their ribbons.
Everyone was in a peaceful mood. There were still seven hours left to spend on the square until the voting in Guatemala, and the schedule included Iosif Kobzon, the group Laskovy Mai, Filipp Kirkorov, and several rounds of the Olympic hymn.
I walked around the theater. Some local officials were coming out of the service entrance after eating at the buffet that had been provided for them inside. They were noticeably nervous and were plucking at pieces of paper in their hands that had the script of the concert. The last words I heard were these: "The emcees congratulate (or…) everyone on the choice of Sochi as the capital of the Winter Olympic Games. They announce Bilan."
Mikhail Zygar
All the Article in Russian as of July 05, 2007
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