From The Sunday Times

December 18, 2005

Russia’s ski slum bids to be next Chamonix

by Mark Franchetti, Moscow

ASPEN is famed for the quality of its snow, Chamonix for its spectacular peaks and St Moritz for its glitzy après-ski. If President Vladimir Putin has his way, however, skiers from around the world could soon be flocking to Krasnaya Polyana, his favourite winter resort in the Caucasus mountains.

Russian investors are planning to pump £3 billion into Krasnaya Polyana — 200 miles from Chechnya — as part of an attempt to expand tourism and stage the 2014 Winter Olympics. “Krasnaya Polyana can now become a resort with an international reputation,” Putin said after the recent opening of a tunnel linking it with the Black Sea town of Sochi.

Krasnaya Polyana — it means Red Meadow — has made two unsuccessful bids for the Olympics and has some way to go before it can take on the most prestigious Alpine resorts.
The village is little more than a collection of run-down wooden houses and corrugated-iron shacks huddled around a muddy car park where old women sell cheap vodka, and walnuts covered in honey. Most accommodation is basic and pigs roam the streets, picking at mountains of rubbish.

Krasnaya Polyana has only four clunky Soviet-era chair lifts, often brought to a halt by power cuts. Officially Russia’s snowiest spot, the resort nevertheless offers good skiing — even if the best slopes can be reached only by helicopter.

“Give it a few more years and the place really could become Russia’s Courchevel,” said James Morland of Elemental Adventure, a British agency that organises heli-skiing trips to the resort.

Under the plans, backed by Vladimir Potanin, a metals tycoon worth an estimated £2.5 billion, private investors will install modern lifts, carve out new runs and build a village with hotels, restaurants and nightclubs.

Yuri Barzykin, the deputy head of the Russian parliament’s committee on economic policy, business and tourism, is confident of success. “It has the potential to become even better than resorts abroad,” he said.