Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Dmitry Medvedev: Greetings, everyone. Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best! We have a good tradition to hold a meeting in Sochi during the holiday season. Some might not like it but I think we should adhere to our traditions.  We have a little over a year left and there is still a lot of work to be done.

Some sports facilities have already been commissioned and hosted large-scale international tournaments. At the end of 2012 the Iceberg Ice Palace hosted the Figure Skating Grand Prix and World Ski Jumping Cup was held at the Russian Hills Complex. In general, trial competitions have been held and are still being held at the Olympic standard and it is crucial for us that we received positive feedback from the International Olympic Committee.

Our hardest test is coming up in 2013. Trial competitions will be staged at ten Olympic facilities both in the alpine cluster and in the coastal one in each of the sports in the Olympic programme. This is not going to be just a dress rehearsal. In fact, this is full-fledged Olympics and everything should be operating at the highest level. I don’t mean just the sports and tourism facilities, but also transport, power supply, communications, healthcare, culture, and utilities lines. That is the reason I have summoned our colleagues, the ministers in charge of power generation and transport.

It has been reported to me that 44 facilities were commissioned last year, and certain stages were commissioned at ten other facilities. However, a number of construction projects are running behind schedule. I would like to get a report from you on what you need to do to correct this situation and in what time frame. And, of course, this is not even open for discussion – the schedule for 2013 must be implemented fully.

The success of the Olympics and the prestige of our country depend on the success of the Olympic facilities. Their timely completion and sound infrastructure, and the impeccable holding of the trial competitions and then the Olympics... This is our strategic goal. The major issue is that everything must be constructed to ensure convenience and, I stress, safety, because anything can happen in the mountain.

Let’s get started. Dmitry Chernyshenko has the floor first. If you please.

Dmitry Chernyshenko (President of the Organising Committee of the Twenty-Second Olympic Winter Games and Eleventh Paralympic Winter Games in 2014 in Sochi, a non-profit independent organisation): Thank you. Mr Medvedev, you rightly pointed out that there are 398 days and nights remaining until the Olympic Games.

Dmitry Medvedev: Are you counting minutes or days?

Dmitry Chernyshenko: Yes, we are counting down. We are in the middle of the most ambitious trial competition season. This is the main rehearsal. In 2013, we will have 44 international and Russian competitions. During the three test seasons, 73 events will be held in 15 sports. This is an absolute record and much more than our predecessors did in Turin and Vancouver. By the way, they must be thoroughly tested for obvious reasons – first, because all of the infrastructure was created from scratch, even though it was built based on the highest, state-of-the-art standards of the International Olympic Committee and various other international federations.

Second, the Olympic Games programme is unprecedented in terms of the number of medal events. For the first time in the history of the Olympic movement, there are 98 different medal events – 12 more than in Vancouver. Never before in the history of the Olympic Games have there been, for example, team competitions of  figure skaters or mixed relays of biathletes, or of lugers, the slope-style, which a new and popular sport among youth, and women’s ski jumping, among various other sports. By the way, many of the female athletes, as you pointed out, have already had the opportunity to test our ski jumping board during the World Cup in December.

Dmitry Medvedev: What did they say?

Dmitry Chernyshenko: Everyone loved it. Two events have been held successfully – the luge international training week and the prestigious Grand Prix of Figure Skating Grand Prix finals, in which we took the silver and the gold, which is rather pleasing. After the event, we received positive feedback from international federations, referees, global media and, most importantly, top athletes, because the world's sporting elite had gathered there to participate. They lauded our modern facilities. Over the next four months, international competitions will be held for all Olympic and Paralympic disciplines. As a result of this extensive programme, Sochi has entered the list of the most sporty cities in the world, alongside Melbourne, New York, Vancouver, and London, according to the Sport Business authoritative international magazine. So, we can congratulate the residents of Sochi. Roughly 3,600 athletes, 2,200 coaches, and 1,400 referees and 5,200 volunteers will participate in the competitions this season. You are absolutely right – this is really comparable to the Olympic Games – just spread out a bit over time.

The volunteers who are now being tested, battle-tested for our events, are the backbone of the volunteer team that will work at our Olympic Games.

Dmitry Medvedev: And how many volunteers do we already have?

Dmitry Chernyshenko: You know, there is more competition to become a volunteer for the Games than there is to go to prestigious universities. We need only 25,000 volunteers. We enable volunteers from across the country to participate in this competition through our volunteer centres, and we have received over 150,000 applications. We select volunteers most carefully – truly the best of the best.

Dmitry Medvedev: These young people are from all over the country, right?

Dmitry Chernyshenko: Yes. By the way, Russia is ranked eighth for the number of volunteers in a rating put together by a global charitable organisation. This is amazing for us because, as you remember, we started to create this voluntary service movement almost from scratch. We are now in eighth place, and this is a very respectable result!

Over 80,000 people will come to watch the trial competitions, so Sochi sports fans have the enviable and unique opportunity to attend the most prestigious international sporting events of the season.

We also expect over 1,500 journalists, including many from abroad, about 1,000 broadcasters, so there will be tremendous pressure to perform. By the way, 15 international events will be broadcast in 30 countries; in other words, it will be a very important programme. A Russian organisation will be responsible for the signal, a particularly important task. A special organisation was created for this purpose and it will film the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The management system that was created for the trial competitions will be running more or less in the same format during the Games. Dmitry Kozak’s interagency commission will oversee the general management of the trial competitions programme and the State Commission will exercise these powers during the Games. A headquarters has been established for co-ordinating interagency interaction. This headquarters is accountable to the interagency commission and manages the operations of the ten organising committees for the trial competitions, which have been established according to the number of facilities. Operational headquarters for security, transport, energy, medicine and working with the media will also be established and they will facilitate the implementation of activities in their respective fields of work. For example, the city headquarters is charged with co-ordinating the various city services during the trial competitions and then during the Games. There will also be 30 functional command centres including for arrival and departure, accreditation, visa support, protocol support, logistics, delivery of goods and catering.

Key information systems will be launched in February to test the technology for managing accommodation, accreditation, medical care, athlete qualifications, and most importantly, managing sports results, because there are very strict regulations about when athletes’ results may be made public. The functioning of an access control and visitor registration system, which involves the issuance of special registration cards for all spectators, will be verified at the Biathlon World Cup, held here in March, and the World Junior Hockey Championships, held in April in the coastal cluster. We will test our plan for guaranteed snow-making. This is especially important for the take off ramps and for the Nordic combined track. It is important to check the stability of uninterrupted power supply to the Olympic venues. Back-up systems are deployed at key sites using diesel generators and, of course, we are finalising our transport plan with special requirements for road maintenance. For transporting athletes, for example, we use transport schemes that do not conflict with the construction project, to split up different types of traffic. We are also now actively testing the operational services of sports venues across the country, literally bringing together our best specialists and are working on all operational aspects of the object, in order to bring our new facilities to Olympic level. We will check the operation of communications, including mobile and TETRA standard wireless communications , because stable communications are key for both security and safety, especially for athletes on slopes. And we will work hard prior to the Olympic Games on testing a barrier-free environment, to ensure accessibility on the eve of the Paralympic Games. We will fine tune 11 out of 28 plans for responding to incidents during the Games, such as event delays or postponements due to bad weather, avalanche risks, lack of snow, traffic incidents, accidents, infrastructure failures and fires at Olympic venues.

And in a month’s time, from January 27 to February 4, the management system for the Games itself will undergo comprehensive, large-scale test, involving over 50 federal and regional executive bodies, local authorities, agencies and organisations. And the International Olympic Committee and the organisers from future games in Rio and Pyeongchang will be joining us. They will come to learn from us and from our experience. This is part of a comprehensive programme to improve operational readiness for the Games. Here is the road map where all these measures for operational readiness are spelled out. We have it as a hand out. This road map calls for a total 150 compulsory measures. And apart from the trial competitions, there will be testing of the non-competition facilities, such as the Olympic village and training and rehearsals at the facilities, including the rehearsal of the opening and closing ceremonies, fine tuning the response plans, procedures, that is, preparing for various events, not just the Games, such as the Olympic torch relay, which starts on October 7, the largest relay all over the country. And, of course, we will test a large number of technological systems that we’re developing for the Games. The implementation of the road map will be the key for our success with the 2014 Games. Everything is going according to plan, and Dmitry Kozak is in complete control of the process. I hope all will be well, and we will not let you down.

Dmitry Medvedev: One thing you said about communications – “We will check the quality of communications.” Why do you need to check the quality? It's either there or it’s not. You need to install communications towers – if there are towers, there will be communications. How are we doing with this?

Dmitry Chernyshenko: You know, progress is varied.  

Dmitry Medvedev: I know that it is varied.  

Dmitry Chernyshenko: We are managing for the most part because our TETRA standard communication system has an option for switching to analogue mode in which it will work point for point in critical situations, for example, if power fails or some equipment breaks down. This is also part of the test. I hope that we won’t have to use this option during the Games.

Dmitry Medvedev: Okay, check it. Let’s move on.

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