President Vladimir Putin: The presentation has formally ended and therefore I will allow myself to say literally two words. First and foremost I would like to thank all of you for coming here and for your interest in Russia’s candidature to host the Olympic games here in Sochi. I am confident that whatever brought you here, whatever your orders and professional obligations are, you are not indifferent to sports. But I am not going to repeat all of what my colleagues have already said at this podium.
I have no doubt, simply no doubt whatsoever, that if Russia wins the bid to host the Olympic games in Sochi, we will cope successfully with this task.
I would now like to say something else. Please look at the map of Russia. Russia is the largest country in the world but it is mainly a northern one. We have very few places like these on the Black Sea coast – this is a unique place. And for that reason we are going to develop this territory in any case. First of all, this is certainly for our own citizens, for the citizens of the Russian Federation, but not only. It is also for all foreign citizens who want to holiday here. Our citizens are now traveling a great deal abroad. We will be happy to welcome tourists from other countries who want to relax here. I think you have seen for yourselves how unique this climate is – down below the climate is subtropical and up above there are mountains and snow. Where we were today the snow was four to six metres thick. The day before yesterday I skied in another place and there was about seven to eight metres of snow. Conditions are simply very good.
Please look at the territory we are in. In ancient times there were Greek settlements here and then new peoples came to inhabit this area, but we have not forgotten everything that remains from ancient times – this is all in our memory. According to an ancient legend it was here on one of the rocks above, near where you were, where Prometheus was chained to a rock. As we are both well aware, this hero is famous for having given people fire. Fire can destroy, but it also can create. We all are now working together towards ensuring that this fire unites all, unites us all around sport and common humanistic ideals.
Russia intends to spend a huge amount of money on the development of this region, about 12 billion dollars. Of this money about two thirds will be spent on infrastructure: on roads, on resolving environmental problems, on communications, on improving peoples’ lives. This money will be spent towards uniting people from all over the world around the idea of physical education.
We will not spend this money on guns, on ammunition, on fighting aircraft, or on tanks. We will spend this money so that people from all over the world congregate here in Sochi, in Russia, and join hands. We will do everything to make Sochi a worthy capital of the 2014 Olympic games. And I am very much counting on your help.
Thank you very much for your attention.