BULGARIA PRESENTS CONCEPT FOR OLYMPIC 2014 BID
Pople's Daily Online, 14. 12. 2005
Holding the winter Olympic Games 2014 will stimulate the country's economic development, popularize Bulgarian natural and cultural heritage, promote constructions of sport facilities and transport infrastructures and create new jobs, said Tseko Minev, chairman of the Bulgarian Ski Federation at a press conference on Tuesday.
The ex-sport minister Vasil Ivanov-luchano, vice-president of BOC Svetlana Otsetova and other members of "Sofia 2014"-- the national games organising committee, presented their entire concept for the Olympic Games bid, which is to be submitted to the International Olympic Committee in January 2006.
Under the concept, the capital city is planned to host a selected part of winter sports, including ice skating, short track, bobsleigh, sledge and curling, while the country's mountain pearls of Borovets and Bansko, 70-120 km away from Sofia, will focus the main activities to be part of the Olympic Games, for instance, ski jumping, alpine ski, free ski, ski biathlon, etc.
The key Olympic village will be built up in the outskirts of Vitosha mountain, southern pearl of Sofia city. Meanwhile, two multifunctional sport halls will rise as well in the southern part of Sofia.
To meet all requirements of Olympic Games, Sofia is to solve the problem with insufficient parking lots and hotel accommodation, Minev added.
It will take 1.332 million euro for Bulgaria to erect Olympic sports facilities as part of its 2014 Games bid, and the finances are to be collected through sponsorship, advertising and commercial items, Minev claimed.
Sofia officially claimed its candidature for the Winter Olympic Games 2014 in June this year. The International Olympic Committee will list final candidate cities from Almaty (Kazakhstan), Borjomi (Georgia), Jaca (Spain), PyeongChang (Republic of Korea), Salzburg (Austria), Sochi (Russia) and Sofia (Bulgaria) in next June and pick out the luckiest at the 119th conference in Guatemala 2007.
