Fake snow, 63F heat and an icy chill of fear: Is Sochi the most insane Winter Olympics ever?

In 26 days, the Winter Olympics begin in Sochi, Russia

But the temperature in the subtropical region reached 63F last February

Forecast is predicting no more than 2cm of snow in the next week

40,000 soldiers, police and Federal Security Services were drafted in

With palm trees lining a promenade bathed in soft sunlight, it is easy to imagine that you are strolling along a beach on the Cote D'Azur.

An angler wearing a light sweater sits at the end of a jetty, keeping an eye on the three fishing lines he has dropped into the still water. Birds hunt for food as though it is mid-summer.



Just two things spoil the illusion of being in the South of France - the pebble, rather than sandy beach, and the displays of Olympic souvenirs on sale in small boutiques. Although the shops are also still selling beach balls and other summertime paraphernalia.



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Malcolm says it is easy to imagine that you are strolling along a beach on the Cote D'Azur

Yet, in 26 days, Sochi will become the capital of the sporting universe when the Winter Olympics begin in this resort on Russia's Black Sea. No one recalls the last occasion it snowed in this city.

And only those who venture to the mountains on the near-horizon feel a need to own a wardrobe with fur-trimmed parkas or fleece-lined anoraks. As the rest of Russia is shivering in the grip of a typically bitter freeze - minus 6C in Moscow, minus 4C in St Petersburg and minus 30C in parts of Siberia - the temperature in this subtropical region reached 63F last February.



Next month ice hockey, figure skating, speed skating and curling will take place in the ice dome at the Olympic Park across the street from the beach front - on land that will also provide the circuit for Formula 1's first Russian Grand Prix in October.

With a promise of providing a no-expense spared Games, Russian President Vladimir Putin convinced the International Olympic Committee in 2007 that this would be a perfectly legitimate location for the 2014 Winter Games. Conveniently, he overlooked the incidental detail that the Krasnaya Polyana mountains can hardly boast a dependable snow record.



Warm front: A cable car, above, is impressive but snow is sparse

On Friday brand new cable cars, operating a short walk from the impressive new railway station in the mountains, travelled empty across terrain that has not seen snow this winter. The weather forecast is predicting little more than a dusting - no more than 2cm - in the next week.

Unless the weather makes a dramatic intervention, these Games, disingenuously awarded to the warmest region of Russia in winter, will be heavily reliant on man-made snow to enable the skiing events to run to programme. Each night snow-making machines ensure the various pistes for the alpine races are given an artificial makeover. Incredibly, vast warehouses have stored up 450,000 cubic metres of snow from last year.

It is being kept in eight vaults under special blankets - made from isothermal fabric - to stop it defrosting. And a special kind of snow salt is being used as a kind of glue for if and when the snow melts.

'Russian President Vladimir Putin conveniently overlooked the incidental detail that the Krasnaya Polyana mountains can hardly boast a dependable snow record'

But if these Olympics aren't cooled by a cold climate, there is one palpable froideur that hangs over this resort: the chill of fear. For the Games are being staged in a gun-patrolled fortress against a background of anxiety and paranoia after 40,000 soldiers, policemen and women, and members of the dreaded Federal Security Services were drafted in to protect Putin's reputation by keeping the Games safe.



Last week's arrival of a brigade of Cossacks - the sword-carrying warriors famed in tsarist Russia, will further counter the risk of an assault from the neighbouring Islamic republics of Chechnya and Dagestan in the near-lawless North Caucasus.

It is now pertinent for the rest of the world to ask: Is this the most insane Olympics in history? Putin has sanctioned an investment of £31 billion on these Games - more than three times the cost of London 2012 - with £1.2 billion devoted to the most extensive, heavy-handed security plan ever imposed at any Olympics.

Winter Olympics - Sochi 2014: A publicity picture featuring Hazel Irvine, Clare Balding and Jonathan Edwards

One senior Olympic source told The Mail on Sunday last night: 'When the noble principles of the Olympics are being lost, or sacrificed, perhaps there is a larger question to be posed to the IOC. That question is: “Have we reached a point when a secure Games becomes a Security Games?” '

Undeniably this is a city holding its breath. British Special Forces are already conducting clandestine operations, according to Russian state sources. Yesterday, the FBI confirmed they will deploy agents here as well as in Moscow, and the US ski and snowboard teams have hired a crisis-response company with five aircraft on standby to evacuate their athletes in case of a terror attack.

There are armed checkpoints at all entry points to the Olympic Park and the beachfront flanking its perimeter is fenced with CCTV cameras 50 yards apart for as far as the eye can see. Drones patrol unseen overhead and sonar devices scour the water of the Black Sea. Cars not bearing a local registration, or an Olympic credential, are turned back at a roadblock 40 miles away. It's all a grim reminder of the days of Soviet oppression supposedly buried more than two decades ago.

In 2007, when Putin won these Olympics for Russia, he pledged to the IOC: 'I will stages the best Games festivities yet seen.'



But all available evidence now indicates that these are going to be the most tense Games ever witnessed.



The Bolshoy Ice Dome, pictured drenched in sun, is located near the beach

Dmitry Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi Organising Committee, insisted yesterday: 'Terrorism is a global threat, and for terrorism there is no boundaries, no territories. In Sochi, from the very beginning of the construction phase, the state authorities did their utmost to prepare special measures - from the screening of raw materials to preparing far-reaching security - to provide the safest- ever environment here.'

It is a wild exaggeration of anything I have witnessed at the 12 previous Olympic Games I have reported. I arrived on a flight from Moscow at 1.15am on Thursday. My taxi driver was forbidden entrance at three checkpoints guarding the gateway to the Olympic Park where I was booked into a new hotel in the local port. Eventually, guards told the taxi driver to park 50 yards away and to instruct me to approach on foot for screening in a high-tech portable building.

Eight men wearing fur hats and dark navy uniforms - characters who might have stepped from the pages of a novel by John Le Carre - formed a horseshoe-shape in front of me as I stood behind a rail. My IOC media accreditation, also serving as a multi-entry visa to Russia, was treated with disdain.



Every request to call the hotel to verify that a room was reserved for me was lost in translation - or ignored. The hotel was a mere 300 yards away. Soon the eight men menacingly became a dozen.

Faces moved closer as voices grew louder and more agitated. My interrogation continued in Russian, with a few words in English, for more than 20 minutes.



Fortress: A total of 40,000 soldiers, police and secret service agents have been drafted in for the Sochi Games

At last, two staff from the hotel, one with an Olympic credential, summoned by the taxi driver without anyone noticing, vouched for my booking and entitlement to be allowed past. As a parting shot my bag was turned inside out. Vodka never tasted better as a nightcap.

Tension shows no sign of easing, though. On Friday, it was reported six bodies and three explosive devices were found in abandoned cars, or close to them, in a town barely 180 miles away. The victims were murdered, say investigators. Another six deaths to add to the 34 people killed last month by suicide bombers in Volgograd, a city 400 miles from here.

No one has claimed responsibility for the latest six victims. But the leading suspects are Islamic militants orchestrated by Chechen rebel leader, Doku Umarov. He has vowed to wreak wrath on these Olympics he calls a 'Satanic dance on the bones of our ancestors'. Umarov is the most wanted man in Russia, but his whereabouts remain a mystery.



Yesterday, Russian authorities said five members of a banned militant group had been arrested and a home-made bomb defused in Nalchik, a town 190 miles from Sochi.

Putin was here last weekend. During his skiing trip he will have viewed the fabulous new hotels that form a stately looking street beyond the perimeter of the train station. There are also impressive contemporary apartment blocks in this village built from a standing start.



But what happens to all these rooms afterwards? Will Russian oligarchs and their friends desert Colorado or the established haunts of Gstaad or Courchevel? Putin does not care as long as the world notices what he has done to showcase Russia in front of the world.

In reality, these Games have lurched from one crisis to the next. Behind the outstanding accomplishments of engineering excellence, and innovative design, lie an avalanche of allegations of corruption at the core of these Olympics.



Accusations have persisted that huge amounts exchanged hands in return for the contracts to build facilities and improve infrastructure in the region. All the allegations have been denied, naturally.

Then Putin's government introduced controversial anti-gay laws last year to the widespread condemnation of much of the world. He only recently eased curbs on rallies against the law.



Yesterday it was revealed that a 'protest zone' - where critics of those laws and other rights abuses can have their say - has been set up for the duration of the Games. But it is more than ten miles away from Sochi, in the town of Khosta.

'The Games are being staged in a gun-patrolled fortress against a background of anxiety and paranoia'

President Barack Obama reacted to the laws by naming three gay members in the US delegation to Sochi 2014; tennis legend Billie Jean King, skater Brian Boitano and ice hockey player Caitlin Cahow. Mr Obama will not attend the Games. Neither will David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande or German President Joachim Gauck.



Putin has also caused deep irritation to Western leaders over his stance on Syria and Iran. And he invited more scorn by granting temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, the former CIA agent who leaked data from the National Security Agency systems.



But the Russian president surprised the West before Christmas when he pardoned Russian oligarch, and political enemy, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He also freed Greenpeace activists from Russian jails and members of the punk band Pussy Riot. These are the games within the Games.

Meanwhile, the locals have mixed emotions about the Games. In the streets of Adler, the closest conurbation of shops and restaurants to the Olympic Park, there is little to suggest the Games are a month away. But there is also pride from others who view the first post-Soviet Olympics as another step distant from the tyrannical past of their country.

Olga Savchenko, 25, from Siberia, has postponed her studies in Berlin to be a volunteer here. 'I want people to understand how cool Russians are,' she said. 'In Berlin people are surprised if I do something good. They say to me, “You are Russian... you are supposed to be rude.'' Of course, many people here are sceptical of the cost of the Olympics. But it's happened - so, we must make sure we make the best of them now. And when they are over.'

But there is only one agenda in play now: a need to keep these Olympics safe. The army of 40,000 is deployed to do just that - even if it means the spirit of the Olympics is trampled underfoot.



Dmitry Chernyshenko added: 'As a native of Sochi, I am honoured to have been part of a project which has sparked such extensive transformation across the region, and more widely in Russia. We are excited about hosting the greatest Games in memory, while the legacy of the Games will be our greatest achievement and will be felt by generations for years to come.'

From this pleasantly warm city, now in virtual lockdown, it is to be hoped he is right.





