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The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXII Olympic Winter Games, is an international winter multiple sports event that will be held from February 7 to February 23, 2014. The host city, Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia, was elected on July 4, 2007, during the 119th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Guatemala City, Guatemala. This will be the first time that the Russian Federation will host the Winter Olympics; the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.
The Games will be organized within two clusters, a coastal cluster in Sochi and a mountain cluster in Krasnaya Polyana.
The Winter Olympic Games are a winter multi-sport event held every
four years. They feature winter sports held on snow or ice, such as
Alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, ice skating, bobsledding and ice
hockey.
Each National Olympic Committee (NOC), as with the Summer Olympic Games,
enters athletes to compete against other NOC's athletes
for gold, silver, and bronze medals. Fewer countries participate in
the Winter Olympics than the Summer Olympics, due largely to the
reduced availability of winter sports in many countries nearer to the
Equator, and where access to winter sport training facilities are quite
limited or non-existent. Also areas in which the Winter Olympics are
usually held, are required to be near a mountain range where it snows -
for the Alpine skiing events. Outdoor natural snow is also a necessity
for cross-country skiing.
The United States of America has hosted the Winter Games the most times,
four, most recently in 2002. France has hosted the winter games
three times, most recently in 1992. Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Japan,
and Italy have all hosted the games twice. Canada will host for the
second time in 2010 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Germany and Yugoslavia
have hosted the games once, and Russia is tentatively-planned
to host the Winter Olympics for the first time in 2014. Three cities
have hosted the Winter Games twice: St. Moritz, Switzerland; Innsbruck,
Austria; and Lake Placid, USA.
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