索契冬奧會被指準備不足 俄官員奮起回擊

索契冬奧會被指準備不足 俄官員奮起回擊

Rooms without doorknobs, locks or heat, dysfunctional toilets, surprise early-morning fire alarms and a Welcome Wagon of stray dogs: These are the initial images of the 2014 Winter Olympics that foreign journalists have blasted around the world from their officially assigned hotels-and the wave of criticism has rankled Russian officials.

Dmitry Kozak, the deputy prime minister responsible for the Olympic preparations, seemed to reflect the view held among many Russian officials that some Western visitors are deliberately trying to sabotage Sochi's big debut out of bias against Russia. 'We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day,' he said. An aide then pulled a reporter away before Mr. Kozak could be questioned further on surveillance in hotel rooms. 'We're doing a tour of the media center,' the aide said.

A spokesman for Mr. Kozak later on Thursday said there is absolutely no surveillance in hotel rooms or bathrooms occupied by guests. He said there was surveillance on premises during construction and cleaning of Sochi's venues and hotels and that is likely what Mr. Kozak was referencing. A senior official at a company that built a number of the hotels also said there is no such surveillance in rooms occupied by guests.

Mr. Kozak toured the giant, gleaming new media center Thursday morning, marveling at the huge workspace built specially for the thousands of journalists who have come from around the world to cover the Games.

Asked about the widely reported problems with hotel rooms not being ready for guests, he was dismissive. 'We've put 100,000 guests in rooms and only gotten 103 registered complaints and every one of those is being taken care of,' he said. (It wasn't clear what Mr. Kozak was counting as a registered complaint.)

In a news conference, Mr. Kozak said he had no 'claims against Western or Russian journalists who are doing their jobs.' Most of the critical views of the accommodations or preparations amount to 'small imperfections in the Olympic facilities and tourist infrastructure,' Mr. Kozak said, noting that it wasn't long ago that the entire Olympic area was an 'open field.'

'The realization of such a project is an enormous victory for the entire country,' he said. 'As we say in Russia, victors don't get blamed.'

Vladimir Yakunin, president of the national rail operator Russian Railways, which built much of the infrastructure for the Games, including subcontracting on some accommodations that weren't completed on time, attacked Western coverage as biased in a blog Thursday.

'I'm very offended that the closer we get to the opening of the Olympics, the more hysteria around Russia becomes inflamed in the Western media,' he wrote. 'There's not a word about the quality of the Olympic facilities, about the fact that the level of readiness of the Olympic infrastructure has no analogues in the world.'

To build the facilities for the roughly $50 billion Sochi Olympics, Russia has built nearly an entire city from scratch. Organizers completed all the sporting venues, including the hockey and figure skating arenas, well ahead of time, as well as two villages for the Olympic competitors-one in the mountains and one by the sea.

Indeed, some American athletes have been pleasantly surprised after all the reports of the problematic hotels. U.S. short-track speed skater Sugar Todd said she had heard the horror stories about accommodations, but she could barely muster a complaint about her own Olympic digs. When she arrived here last week for her first trip to the Games, she only noticed that her shared room was so spacious that it looked almost as if it were missing furniture.

'The doors all have doorknobs. The lights all have light bulbs,' she said. 'The water is hot and running and doesn't come out a strange color. So I'm feeling pretty good.'

Her long-track compatriot Brian Hansen only noticed a couple of small things that, he said, were never issues in Vancouver four years ago. 'When we got here, there was no soap and no trash cans,' he said. 'One other thing, there's no place to put our luggage.' Needing far more than the single closet Hansen and Joey Mantia share, four bags of clothes and gear are strewed over the floor.

But while Sochi's organizers completed the accommodations reserved for Olympic competitors and top Olympic officials well in advance, much of the housing and hotels for the media fell by the wayside, particularly in the mountain media village, one of the most problematic sites in the Olympic project. A number of hotels were simply not fully completed, with workers furiously painting and constructing bits of buildings in recent days.

Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, responded to the outpouring of criticism in an interview with the Russian radio station Kommersant FM on Wednesday. He said that stray dogs were indeed a problem in Sochi but characterized the complaints about the hotels as a matter of taste.

'In fairness, I would ask everyone to recall the reports from international and our domestic media about various Olympics,' Mr. Peskov said. 'Everywhere someone doesn't like the food, someone doesn't like the hotel, someone thinks the mattress is too hard, etc. That is, such complaints accompany all Olympics. But the guest is always right and the organizer is obliged to listen to these complaints.' He said he is sure Sochi's organizers are working around the clock to fix the 'flaws.'

酒店房間里沒有門把手，沒有門鎖，沒有暖氣，廁所也不好用，凌晨火警讓你嚇一跳，還有成群結(jié)隊的流浪狗歡迎你——這些外國記者從2014年冬奧會指定酒店發(fā)向全世界的第一批圖片引發(fā)了批評的浪潮，也讓俄羅斯官員頗為惱火。

負責冬奧會籌備的俄羅斯副總理科扎克(Dmitry Kozak)似乎很能代表許多俄羅斯官員的看法，這些官員認為，一些西方游客是在故意破壞索契為打破人們對俄羅斯的偏見而進行的盛大首秀。他說，酒店的監(jiān)控錄像顯示有人打開淋浴開關，把噴頭沖著墻壁，然后整天不在房間。一名記者想進一步就酒店房間的監(jiān)控錄像質(zhì)問科扎克，但沒來得及問就被一名助手拖走。這名助手說，我們要去參觀媒體中心。

科扎克的發(fā)言人周四晚些時候說，客人入住的酒店房間和浴室里絕對沒有監(jiān)控設備。他說，在索契比賽場館和酒店施工和清理過程中曾在樓內(nèi)安裝了監(jiān)控，科扎克指的可能是那些設備。曾參與多家酒店施工的一家公司的高管也說，客人入住的房間沒有這類監(jiān)控設施。

科扎克周四上午參觀了宏大嶄新的媒體中心，對這座為數(shù)千名來自世界各地報道索契冬奧會的記者們專門修建的巨大媒體中心贊不絕口。

當有記者問到被媒體普遍報道的酒店房間設施不完善的問題時，科扎克表現(xiàn)得不屑一顧。他說，我們?yōu)?0萬名客人安排了房間，只收到103份登記投訴，每份投訴都得到了重視。(不清楚什么樣的投訴被算作科扎克所說的登記投訴。)

科扎克在一個新聞發(fā)布會上說，他對報道冬奧會的西方或俄羅斯記者沒有抱怨。科扎克說，對住宿或籌備工作的大部分批評都只能算是奧運會設施和旅游設施的小小的不完美。他指出，不久前整個冬奧會場館區(qū)域還只是一片空地。

他說，完成這樣一個項目是整個國家的巨大勝利。就像俄羅斯老話說的，勝利者不該受指責。

俄羅斯國家鐵路運營商俄羅斯鐵路股份公司(Russian Railways)總裁亞庫寧(Vladimir Yakunin)周四在博客中抨擊西方報道存在偏見。該公司建設了索契冬奧會的大部分基礎設施，包括分包一些后來沒有按時完工的住宿設施。

他寫道，距離奧運會開幕越近，西方媒體對俄羅斯歇斯底里的批評就越猛烈，我對此感到非常不快。對于奧運會設施的質(zhì)量，對于索契冬奧會基礎設施無與倫比的準備就緒程度，西方媒體沒有只言片語。

索契冬奧會耗資約500億美元，為建設冬奧會的基礎設施，俄羅斯幾乎從空無一物建起了一整座城市。組織者提前很長時間建成了全部的比賽場館，包括冰球和花樣滑冰場館，此外還為奧運會參賽選手建了兩座奧運村，一座在山里，一座在海邊。

實際上，就在媒體報道了酒店這樣或那樣的問題后，一些美國運動員卻有驚喜的發(fā)現(xiàn)。美國短道速滑選手托德(Sugar Todd)說，她聽說住宿條件惡劣，但她自己覺得沒什么好抱怨的。上周抵達這里后，她只發(fā)現(xiàn)自己與別人共用的房間太大了，好像少了點家具似的。

她說，每扇門都有把手，每盞燈都有燈泡，水很熱，沒有停水現(xiàn)象，也沒有奇怪的顏色，我感覺非常好。

美國長道速滑選手漢森(Brian Hansen)說，他只注意到一些在四年前溫哥華冬奧會上不存在的一些小問題。他說，當我們到達這里的時候，我們找不到香皂和垃圾桶，也沒有放行李的地方。漢森和曼蒂亞(Joey Mantia)共享的壁櫥不夠用，他們的四箱衣服和裝備只能扔在地上。

但盡管索契冬奧會主辦方提前很久就完成了運動員和奧林匹克高級官員住處的建設，媒體的住宿和酒店建設卻被延誤，尤其是山上的媒體村，這是問題最大的項目之一。一些酒店沒完全竣工，這幾天工人們還在瘋狂地粉刷和掃尾。

俄羅斯總統(tǒng)普京(Vladimir Putin)發(fā)言人佩斯科夫(Dmitry Peskov)周三在接受俄羅斯電臺Kommersant FM采訪時對外界的指責做出了回應。他說，流浪狗在索契確實是個問題，但他認為對酒店的抱怨都是個人喜好問題。

佩斯科夫說，平心而論，我建議大家都回憶一下各國和俄羅斯國內(nèi)媒體對各屆奧運會的報道，每個地方都有人不喜歡當?shù)厥澄?，有人不喜歡酒店，有人認為床墊太硬等等，所有奧運會都會遇到這種抱怨。但顧客總是對的，主辦方有義務聆聽這些抱怨。他相信索契冬奧會主辦方正在夜以繼日地努力解決這些“缺陷”。