Sochi 2014 has unveiled the largest ever Winter Olympic program for next year’s Games, with a record 98 medals to be contested across the seven winter sports of biathlon, bobsleigh, curling, skating, skiing, luge and ice hockey between February 7 and 23.
Across the 17 days of competition, which get underway in exactly 200 days’ time, more than 6,000 athletes and teams members from 85 nations will be in action at both the coastal and mountain clusters, which will host 29 and 69 events respectively.
A total of 12 events – nine of which are skiing disciplines such as women’s ski jumping which will feature for the first time in Olympic history – were added to the Sochi 2014 program to make next year’s Winter Games two events larger than Vancouver 2010, six larger than Turin 2006, 10 larger than Salt Lake City 2002 and 11 larger than Albertville 1992.
“The number of competitions taking place at the Games popular among young people has significantly increased as eight events in freestyle skiing and snowboard [four in each discipline] have been added to the Olympic program including ski halfpipe, ski slopestyle, snowboard slopestyle and snowboard parallel slalom,” added a Sochi 2014 statement.
Team events in three disciplines – figure skating, luge relay and biathlon mixed relay – have also been added to the sports program, which has been approved by the international federations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic Broadcasting Service (OBS).
The full Sochi 2014 Olympic program can be found here.
Inside the Games is an online blog of the London Organizing Committee that staged the 2012 London Games. The blog continues to cover issues that are important to the Olympic Movement. This article is reprinted here with permission of the blog editors.