As part of press tour media representatives first visit construction site of Alpika Service Mountain Ski Resort Olympic facility

Prior to the international test competitions that will soon take place in Sochi, the mass media representatives visited Gazprom’s facilities in the Krasnaya Polyana settlement, namely, the Integrated Biathlon and Ski Complex, the Mountain Olympic Village, Gazprom’s Mountain Tourist Center. As part of the press tour, the journalists visited one more Olympic facility – the Alpika Service Mountain Ski Resort, with Gazprom as the construction investor.

Situated on the slopes and at the bottom of the Aibga Ridge, the Alpika Service Resort is intended for mass leisure of downhill skiing lovers. This ski center was the first one constructed in Krasnaya Polyana. Currently, the facility is under reconstruction and renovation providing for new cableways and pistes as well as cafes, bars, restaurants and other tourist service facilities.

At the moment, a new transportation hub is under construction on the basis of the Alpika Service Mountain Ski Resort. It is here where a new high-speed train from the Adler airport arrives, its travel time being only 30 minutes. The arriving tourists will be able to go up the cableways to the Aigba Ridge and change to a bus or the 3S cableway to the Psekhako Ridge, where all Gazprom’s major Olympic facilities are located – the Biathlon and Ski Complex and the Mountain Tourist Center.

“The construction of such facilities as new cableways, parking lots and access roads will lay the foundation for building the Alpika Service Mountain Ski Resort transportation hub. By 2014 all major resort facilities will be commissioned,” Vladimir Makarenko, Director General of Alpika Service Mountain Ski Resort told us.

The journalists also visited facilities on the Psekhako Ridge – the pistes of the Integrated Biathlon and Ski Complex already tried out by Russian sportsmen, the Biathlon Stadium building, the cottage settlement of the Mountain Olympic Village. The press tour participants checked out the conditions under which the media representatives would work during the approaching competitions of 2013 and 2014: they visited press rooms, a conference hall, commentator booths, the Biathlon Stadium mixed zone.

“Today the commissioned facilities of Gazprom’s sports infrastructure are being prepared for the first international test competitions. At the same time, the construction of other facilities is in progress including the hotel complex and aparthotels integrated in the Mountain Olympic Village, cableways, engineering structures,” said Matvey Geller, Head of the Special Projects and Studies Division under the Information and Communications Department of Gazprom.