The IOC commission is on a visit to Sochi April 22-23 to check preparations for the games, visit the proposed sites and meet with the Sochi Organizing Committee, which is the first time since the commission was formed last year
Chairman Jean-Claude Killy said commission's members were impressed with what they saw and the speed of the preparations by the Russian Olympic Committee.
The IOC official said that Sochi Olympics will probably be the most difficult from the point of view of infrastructure, but added he hoped that all difficulties would be overcome during joint cooperation between Russia and the commission, which is scheduled to return to the city in another six months.
Viktor Kolodyazhny, the head of the Olympstroi state corporation, told the commission that Russia will complete the design of all Olympic facilities this year, with the only exception being the bobsleigh track, which is planned to be completed in January 2009.
Environmental groups earlier voiced concerns that the planned bobsleigh route in the Caucasus State Natural Reserve would cause the most environmental damage of all the Olympic projects, along with a mountain Olympic village and a rail line in the region, classified by UNESCO as the only mountainous area in Europe virtually untouched by humans.
Russia's Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev, however, said that planned facilities for the Olympics, including the bobsleigh track, would go ahead despite protests from environmental groups.
Sochi won the right to host the Olympics during an International Olympic Committee session in Guatemala in July 2007 after a close race with South Korea's Pyeongchang and Austria's Salzburg.
Russia will be hosting the Winter Olympics for the first time. Moscow hosted the Summer Olympics in 1980, but the event was marred by a U.S.-led boycott involving more than 60 countries.
