Winter Olympics 2014 Opening With Fireworks

This Friday, 7th February sees the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia and concerns about the safety of the competitors and support staff is paramount in everyone’s minds as reports about the security issues, water quality problems and of course Russia’s stance on ‘gay’ competitors hits the headlines around the world.

Tuesday evening saw the rehearsals for the opening ceremony and a small taster of the fireworks which will pay an intrinsic part in the celebrations.

The British Winter Olympic team are said to be highly optimistic about their medal winning chances. In an interview, a number of competitors believe this to be the strongest Winter Olympic team in many years as the team will have the chance to show the rest of the World their abilities and hopefully come away with a haul of medals.

The event’s opening ceremony is on Friday of this week and continues until 23rd February. There will be over 2800 competing athletes across 7 sports with a number of additional disciplines (eg downhill, slalom, speed skating and figure skating) across 10 sites around the City of Sochi.

Our region is proud of our Olympic heritage having had a huge haul of medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics in 2012 we are looking to make sure that Yorkshire is on the World map as out of the 56 competitors 11 of them are native of or have set up home in the area. That represents 20% of the team!

We will all, of course, be watching carefully on Friday evening for the fireworks display which we are certain will be nothing short of fabulous and we will, of course, bring you pictures/video footage as soon as it becomes available.

Go Team GB.