The Olympics are a worldwide event, participated in by many countries. This winter, the 2014 Winter Games will be hosted in Sochi, Russia. A lot of controversy has surrounded these games as Russia prepares to host them beginning February 6^th.

Athletes train for years, often most of their lives for just a chance to make it to the Olympic games. One of our very own North Kansas City High School students, junior Samantha Brown was hoping to make it to these very games, “honestly it is kind of heart breaking that I couldn’t be there this year.” While Brown is not going to be attending the 2014 Winter Olympics she states, “It is still exciting to watch, and [it] amps me up to work harder for the next Olympics. I will definitely be there, mark my words!”

Many people are worried about the games being hosted in Sochi because homosexual propaganda has recently been banned in Russia. The full ban is on the promotion of homosexuality to minors. This law makes it illegal to speak in defense of gay rights or to say that heterosexual and homosexual relationships are equal, or hold any public demonstration that could be in favor of gay rights in front of minors, or any place that minors have access to. Moscow has also banned gay pride parades in the city for the next hundred years.

The Olympics are open to so many people and countries, thus, there will be some gay athletes competing in these Olympics; there is no discrimination within the Olympics, so they are allowed to be in the games. The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, stated that gay people have nothing to fear, “just leave the kids alone, please.”

Beyond the controversy, Russia is very devoted to these games. There is a main venue that was built in Sochi, with another part of the games that will be hosted in the mountains nearby. The organizers of the games are planning to make these the greenest and environmentally aware games ever. The 6000 athletes from 85 countries will travel between the two clusters of arenas depending on which sport they are competing for.

Never before has so much money been put into the construction of the games. The estimate for the total cost has reached over $50 billion dollars.

A large portion of the cost of these Olympics is spent on security, as there have been threats of terrorist attacks leading up to these games.  A group of women suicide bombers, known as the black widows have been making threats about bombing the games this February, but officials have stated that they have put a lot of money into security precautions against any type of terrorist act.