Warm weather causing problems for outdoor sports at the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014
The Sochi Winter Olympics are feeling more like the summer games. The high temperature today is 59 degrees and tomorrow’s forecast is even warmer.
- CBS News’ Mark Phillips told the “CBS This Morning” co-hosts that it might be warmer Wednesday in Sochi than it was on some days at the 2012 London Summer Games.
Skiers in the slopestyle event found the going heavy. This is a tough sport when the conditions are consistent, but in slushy, grabby snow, bad things happen.
The pride of Vermont, Devin Logan, did what she had to do, though. To take silver in the event, she adjusted.
“You kind of can't control
Mother Nature, so you just have to go with it and … all the other competitors
are dealing with it just like you,” she said.
They dealt with it in the much anticipated half-pipe as well, or some of then did. Shaun White, the American snowboarding great, didn't so well, He hit the lip of the pipe on his first run and blew a landing on the second. Competitors had complained the bottom of the pipe was too flat and too soft.
Vladimir Putin, never far from anything at these games, seems to be tiring of the complaining about Sochi conditions, whether on the slopes or in the hotels.
It's like the old Cold War days, he said, when the West tried to contain the Soviet Union by criticizing it.
The Russians knew they'd have problems with snow, which is why they stockpiled it. But the Olympics, wherever they are, often have snow trouble. There's too much, there's too little, it's too hard. In this case, it's too soft. Not even Putin can do anything about that.
Games chief Dimitri Chernyshenko admits Sochi was always going to pose a special problem for a Winter Olympics.
“For Americans it will be more like Aspen in the Rocky Mountains and Miami,” said Chernyshenko. “This is the uniqueness of the place.”
The temperature issue is less about actual heat than it is about atmosphere since no events have been cancelled. It's about whether it feels like a Winter Olympics, or like you'd rather be on the beach.