This year the 2014 winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia.  It will be the most expensive Olympics at over fifty-billion US dollars.  It will also be the warmest winter Olympics due to Sochi’s rather humid climate.This year’s games have three mascots:  the polar bear,  the European hare, and the Amur leopard.

On September 29th, 2013 the Olympic torch was brought from Greece to Russia.   It took the traditional seven days to do so.  Then on October 7th of the same year was the ceremonial passing of the torch.  The torch must pass through eighty eight Russian cities before arriving at Sochi for the final ceremony.  The forty-thousand mile route is the longest in Olympic history.  It will pass through all regions of the country.

There will be three new events at these games.  They are ski slopestyle, snowboard slopestyle, and snowboard parallel special slalom.  Slopestyle skiing and snowboarding involves going off huge jumps in order to perform many types of difficult tricks.  The parallel snowboard uses as special snowboard where your feet go one in front of another, pointing forward, as opposed to traditional snowboarding where your feet face outward.  Using this specially designed snowboard, you then complete a slalom race, weaving in and out of flags down the mountain.

This should be an exciting and newsworthy Olympics this year, as with all the politics surrounding Russia recently.  With the surge of protest, political uprise, and even terrorism, the U.S has more than offered to supply more security.  Russia is not really comfortable with that and is trying to control the events themselves, using their own forces.