Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and an IOC delegation visited the construction site of the road between Adler and the Olympic facilities in Krasnaya Polyana. The combined rail-and-motor road has six tunnels, 36 railway facilities and 31 automobile bridges. Its combined length is 124.5 kilometres. The railway can carry 8,500 passengers an hour and the automobile road 11,500.

The first 6-km stretch of the road was commissioned in August 2010. It will take about 30 minutes to travel from the Olympic Park to Krasnaya Polyana on the rail-and-motor road when it is completed in 2013.

During the visit, Russian Railways (RZD) head Vladimir Yakunin invited Vladimir Putin and the IOC delegation to come back in December, when the next section of the road is open. He said the first group of tunnels would be completed by that time.

Jean-Claude Killy said on behalf of the IOC experts that he was impressed by the tunnel construction project.

The RZD head said they are building infrastructure with a focus on environmental sustainability.

"Since we are building the road through a protected area, we have planted over 40,000 trees," he said. "And to be permitted to build bridge pillars in the river, we had to release more than 2.5 million young fish into it."

"We'll go fishing here soon," the prime minister said.

Putin and the IOC delegation then spoke with construction workers, who said the project was comparable to the huge Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) railway.