MOSCOW, July 10 (RIA Novosti) - Members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will visit the winner of the 2014 Winter Olympics bid, Sochi, in late August, the head of the Russian bidding committee said Tuesday.
"By August 5, we have to draw up a detailed action plan for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, and we will receive the IOC's Coordination Committee as early as August 27-29," Dmitry Chernyshenko said, adding that it was so far unclear who would head the visiting committee.
Russia's Black Sea resort city, along with the national Olympic committee, must set up an organizing committee to oversee preparations for the Olympics, as well as the Games themselves, and to report progress to the IOC, Chernyshenko said. Under the Olympic Charter, the committee has to be established within five months after a contract with a winner is signed.
"But we have no time to waste, we have to start preparing for the Winter Games right now. The bidding committee will replace the organizing committee until formalities [to set up the latter] have been completed," Chernyshenko said.
Sochi's Olympic facilities so far exist only on paper, and the resort city has to transform a lot of ambitious projects into reality.
Authorities in the southern Russian region earlier said they expected private investment in infrastructure, ranging from restaurants and thoroughfares to telecommunications and transport, as well as tourism and services to exceed 500 billion rubles ($20 billion).
The economics minister, German Gref, said Tuesday Russia could set up the organizing committee and pass an Olympics law in September, adding he had ordered the draft law ready by July 22.
An Olympics law, as required by the IOC, should set out rules to organize and hold the games, tax privileges for companies engaged in the preparations, simpler visa and customs rugulations.
Gref reiterated the Olympic facilities in Sochi would be completed in 2013. "We need to have a reserve year. There must be no last-minute construction," he said.
Speaking about the IOC officials' visit, Gref said: "We should make preparations so that they do not get the impression that we won and are now relaxed and in no hurry to fulfill our commitments," Gref said.
Chernyshenko also said the Sochi Olympics' mascot would be determined via a nationwide competition.
"We all remember the role that the Misha the bear mascot played in the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games," he said. "I believe we should consult all citizens of our country. There will be a competition, an open tender through which we will probably select a mascot."
Sochi, which had made two previous bids to hold the Winter Olympics in 1998 and 2002, received a slight four-vote majority over South Korea's Pyeongchang, while Austria's Salzburg, which has a developed Olympic infrastructure was eliminated in the first round.
