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Sochi this spring will host 22 test events at its future Olympic venues

The '14 Sochi Games will officially begin one year from today, and the "current overall price tag for the games is $51 billion, more than four times as much as Russia estimated when it was awarded the Olympics in 2007," according to Nataliya Vasilyeva of the AP. This would make Sochi the "most expensive Olympics in history, surpassing the $40 billion that China is believed to have splashed out" for the '08 Beijing Games. The costs are "high because they include extensive infrastructure development in addition to construction of the Olympic venues, almost all of which had to be built from scratch." Most of the sports venues already have "been completed or will be in the next few months, while armies of workers are busy building hotels and ad ...