Last night the Russian city of Sochi was named as host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics after beating Pyeongchang in South Korea and Salzburg in the International Olympic Committee vote.
It was a close run thing: Salzburg were eliminated after the first round of voting, before Sochi won 54 votes in the final round, just four more than Pyeongchang. Pyeongchang had also bid unsuccessfully for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and some of the crowd gathered in the Korean city wept as they learned they had lost out again. Meanwhile in Sochi, on the Black Sea, there were wild celebrations.
Was it the right decision? And, when almost every Olympics of recent times seems to have had problems with overspend and debt, why do cities still bid for them? What do you think?
