It's a Farce! Sochi slopes melt in the heat as athletes join forces to voice their anger



The Winter Olympics was in danger of sinking into chaos as the snow melted here on Tuesday.



Competitors criticised conditions in the Rosa Khutor mountains as 'mushy', prompting the organisers to dip into their reserves of stored snow to keep the Games going.



No snow has fallen here since before the Olympics opened last Friday, when the Bermudan team marched in wearing shorts.



Not impressed: Team GB's Katie Summerhayes says she expected conditions to be tough in the summer

Now temperatures in the lower mountain regions — at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Centre and Extreme Park where ski slopestyle and the women’s ski jump took place on Tuesday — have reached 6°C, a degree warmer than in Aviemore, the home of British skiing.



The snow line is rising by the day and, with 11°C forecast for the end of the week, the problem is likely to get worse.



Despite spending a reputed £31billion on the Games, the folly of staging winter sports in a balmy Black Sea resort noted for the palm trees lining coastal areas of the town was always going to present a grave risk.



While people on the coast could dispense with thick coats, the Russian soldiers wearing white camouflage on the climb up the mountain stood out like beacons in the brown, drying forest.



Mushy: American skier Devin Logan slides down a slope at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park on Tuesday

Shaun White, who missed a third consecutive snowboard half-pipe title, criticised the course, saying: ‘It’s pretty hard to ride. The flat bottom is just sand and mush. It’s pretty heavy. And once everyone gets in there it just turns to slush.’



SOCHI SHORTS

British speed skater Jack Whelbourne’s right ankle is in an air cast to reduce swelling as he battles to be fit for tomorrow’s 1,000m short-track heats. Whelbourne, who twisted his ankle during Monday’s 1500m final, is also scheduled to compete in the men’s 500m on Tuesday.



German Carina Vogt, 22, became the first ever women’s Olympic ski jumping champion. The German world No2 collapsed in tears after her second jump of 97.5 metres, the last of the event, pipped Austria’s Daniela Iraschko-Stolz. France’s Coline Mattel, 18, took bronze.



Lebanese skier Jacky Chamoun apologised after photos and a video from a topless photoshoot appeared on the internet, causing a stir in her Arab nation. The 22-year-old said the material was not part of the shoot for an Austrian skiing calendar: ‘The video and photos that you are now seeing are part of the preparation, it wasn’t supposed to go public.’ She added: ‘I want to apologise to all of you, I know that Lebanon is a conservative country.’

Brit Andrew Musgrave, who was eliminated in a quarter-final of cross-country sprint yesterday, added: ‘It’s been so warm it is soft in the downhills and in the turns.’



His team-mate Katie Summerhayes said the conditions for the ski slopestyle, in which she finished seventh, were ‘what you expect in the summer’.



The growing chorus of dissatisfaction prompted Aleksandra Kosterina, head of communications for Sochi 2014, to confirm they had replenished the snow. ‘I cannot tell you how much,’ she said. ‘There were adjustments with the half-pipe and with the jumping, but they are fine now.’

This lack of snow has come as no surprise to the organisers. As a precaution they banked a reported six million cubic feet of snow from last year at 10 makeshift, mountain range reservoirs, with giant isothermal blankets keeping it cold.



In addition, more than 400 cannons or snowmakers mounted on a combination of towers, swing arms and carriages are on the Rosa Khutor ranges and use nozzles to atomize water pumped from lakes along 35,000 specially built pipelines powered by eight pumping stations.



Each cannon breaks the water into tiny particles, the water is then cooled to freezing but is not given room to turn into ice. The cannon mix small amounts of the freezing water with compressed air, and tiny particles form. A powerful fan blows water droplets into the air then they fall to the slopes. Up to 12,000 gallons of water a minute can be turned into snow.

As a back-up, channels have also been built to go from some of the highest peaks all the way down to the competition slopes, ready to send the snow down to where it’s needed most.



Angry: Shaun White of the USA criticised the conditions after failing to win the snowboard halfpipe final

Joseph VanderKelen, president and owner of one of the largest snow-making companies in the world, who has been working with the Russians, admitted: ‘It was very challenging. One of the key aspects was we needed to host the Olympics without planning on any natural snow.’



Despite these extreme measures, the softening snow caused athletes to abandon their training runs and jumps earlier in the week, while some used the snow as a means of cooling down.



British skiing’s golden girl Chemmy Alcott said: ‘There’s probably no snow left at the start because we were all putting it down our backs. There’s definitely a hole. We were like, “Just shove it down,” because of the heat. I am just trying to hide from the sun because I am getting red.’



At the RusSki Gorki Jumping centre organisers were forced to cancel the first of three jumps while mild temperatures played havoc with Nordic combined training, forcing most of the top performers to take the day off.



Covering up: Team GB's Chemmy Alcott says the sun has caused her skin to burn

American Hannah Teter, a two-time Olympic medallist, was even blunter, complaining that she has been unable to practise new tricks because conditions on the halfpipe have not been good. ‘It is a little dangerous,’ she said. ‘I saw more people fall today than I have all season. It’s just dangerous because it’s crappy?’



A covering of five to six feet of snow is required and, while alpine skiers want a hard surface that has no ruts and can withstand the wear and tear of many competitors, the snowboarders and freestylers, like Britain’s only medallist of the Games, Jenny Jones, want a softer more pliable surface. To create a drier snow, less water is used.



So although Jones became the first Briton ever to win a medal on snow, it was not ‘real’ snow that had fallen naturally from the sky but part of an elaborate operation to put the ‘Winter’ into these Olympics.