索契冬奥会被指准备不足 俄官员奋起回击

索契冬奥会被指准备不足 俄官员奋起回击

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.'

酒店房间里没有门把手，没有门锁，没有暖气，厕所也不好用，凌晨火警让你吓一跳，还有成群结队的流浪狗欢迎你——这些外国记者从2014年冬奥会指定酒店发向全世界的第一批图片引发了批评的浪潮，也让俄罗斯官员颇为恼火。

负责冬奥会筹备的俄罗斯副总理科扎克(Dmitry Kozak)似乎很能代表许多俄罗斯官员的看法，这些官员认为，一些西方游客是在故意破坏索契为打破人们对俄罗斯的偏见而进行的盛大首秀。他说，酒店的监控录像显示有人打开淋浴开关，把喷头冲着墙壁，然后整天不在房间。一名记者想进一步就酒店房间的监控录像质问科扎克，但没来得及问就被一名助手拖走。这名助手说，我们要去参观媒体中心。

科扎克的发言人周四晚些时候说，客人入住的酒店房间和浴室里绝对没有监控设备。他说，在索契比赛场馆和酒店施工和清理过程中曾在楼内安装了监控，科扎克指的可能是那些设备。曾参与多家酒店施工的一家公司的高管也说，客人入住的房间没有这类监控设施。

科扎克周四上午参观了宏大崭新的媒体中心，对这座为数千名来自世界各地报道索契冬奥会的记者们专门修建的巨大媒体中心赞不绝口。

当有记者问到被媒体普遍报道的酒店房间设施不完善的问题时，科扎克表现得不屑一顾。他说，我们为10万名客人安排了房间，只收到103份登记投诉，每份投诉都得到了重视。(不清楚什么样的投诉被算作科扎克所说的登记投诉。)

科扎克在一个新闻发布会上说，他对报道冬奥会的西方或俄罗斯记者没有抱怨。科扎克说，对住宿或筹备工作的大部分批评都只能算是奥运会设施和旅游设施的小小的不完美。他指出，不久前整个冬奥会场馆区域还只是一片空地。

他说，完成这样一个项目是整个国家的巨大胜利。就像俄罗斯老话说的，胜利者不该受指责。

俄罗斯国家铁路运营商俄罗斯铁路股份公司(Russian Railways)总裁亚库宁(Vladimir Yakunin)周四在博客中抨击西方报道存在偏见。该公司建设了索契冬奥会的大部分基础设施，包括分包一些后来没有按时完工的住宿设施。

他写道，距离奥运会开幕越近，西方媒体对俄罗斯歇斯底里的批评就越猛烈，我对此感到非常不快。对于奥运会设施的质量，对于索契冬奥会基础设施无与伦比的准备就绪程度，西方媒体没有只言片语。

索契冬奥会耗资约500亿美元，为建设冬奥会的基础设施，俄罗斯几乎从空无一物建起了一整座城市。组织者提前很长时间建成了全部的比赛场馆，包括冰球和花样滑冰场馆，此外还为奥运会参赛选手建了两座奥运村，一座在山里，一座在海边。

实际上，就在媒体报道了酒店这样或那样的问题后，一些美国运动员却有惊喜的发现。美国短道速滑选手托德(Sugar Todd)说，她听说住宿条件恶劣，但她自己觉得没什么好抱怨的。上周抵达这里后，她只发现自己与别人共用的房间太大了，好像少了点家具似的。

她说，每扇门都有把手，每盏灯都有灯泡，水很热，没有停水现象，也没有奇怪的颜色，我感觉非常好。

美国长道速滑选手汉森(Brian Hansen)说，他只注意到一些在四年前温哥华冬奥会上不存在的一些小问题。他说，当我们到达这里的时候，我们找不到香皂和垃圾桶，也没有放行李的地方。汉森和曼蒂亚(Joey Mantia)共享的壁橱不够用，他们的四箱衣服和装备只能扔在地上。

但尽管索契冬奥会主办方提前很久就完成了运动员和奥林匹克高级官员住处的建设，媒体的住宿和酒店建设却被延误，尤其是山上的媒体村，这是问题最大的项目之一。一些酒店没完全竣工，这几天工人们还在疯狂地粉刷和扫尾。

俄罗斯总统普京(Vladimir Putin)发言人佩斯科夫(Dmitry Peskov)周三在接受俄罗斯电台Kommersant FM采访时对外界的指责做出了回应。他说，流浪狗在索契确实是个问题，但他认为对酒店的抱怨都是个人喜好问题。

佩斯科夫说，平心而论，我建议大家都回忆一下各国和俄罗斯国内媒体对各届奥运会的报道，每个地方都有人不喜欢当地食物，有人不喜欢酒店，有人认为床垫太硬等等，所有奥运会都会遇到这种抱怨。但顾客总是对的，主办方有义务聆听这些抱怨。他相信索契冬奥会主办方正在夜以继日地努力解决这些“缺陷”。