Russian reports no snow shortage for Sochi Games

Snow deficit for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games will not happen, head of the Russian Olympic Committee said Saturday, a remark to dispel concerns over possible shortage amid unseasonably warm weather. "There will be no problems with snow," Alexander Zhukov said, adding the Olympics would go ahead "in any weather." "In the mountain region this year a certain reserve of snow has already been gathered," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Zhukov as saying. He noted the stored snow could support "all the mountain disciplines." Meanwhile, some test events including stages of the Cup of Russia Nordic combined event and the slopestyle disciplines of the freestyle World Cup had to be canceled due to warm weather this winter. The organizing committee has stored some 450,000 cubic meters of snow in seven special reservoirs. The largest reservoir, at a cost of 250 million rubles (eight million U.S. dollars), has a capacity of 100,000 cubic meters. The Winter Olympic Games is slated for February 2014 with medals in 98 events to be contested, including 12 new, such as men's and women's snowboard and ski slopestyle, the ski halfpipe, snowboard parallel special slalom, women's ski jumping, the figure skating team event, the luge relay and the biathlon mixed relay. The Russian government allocated nearly 100 billion rubles (some 3 billion dollars) for the preparations of the Sochi Olympics and 144 billion rubles (4.6 billion dollars) more have been received from non-budget sources. Frome: XINHUA