Item: i95919

 Authentic Coin of:

Russia
2014 Winter Olympics, Sochi
2014 Proof Silver 3 Roubles 39mm (33.94 grams) 0.925 Silver (1.0000 oz. ASW)
Reference: Y# 1478 | Engravers: E.V. Kramskaya, A.A. Dolgopolova, A.A. Brynza, A.A. Dolgopolova
РОССИЙСКАЯ ФЕДЕРАЦИЯ Ag 925 31,1 СПМД 3 РУБЛЯ 2014 г., State Coat-of-Arms of the Russian Federation.
СОЧИ 2014, Freestyle skier and a branch of an oleander, the latter performed in color.

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The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXII Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Sochi 2014 (Russian: Сочи 2014), was an international winter multi-sport event that was held from 7 to 23 February 2014 in Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia. Opening rounds in certain events were held on 6 February 2014, the day before the opening ceremony.

These were the first Olympic Games under the International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidency of Thomas Bach. Both the Olympics and Paralympics were organized by the Sochi Organizing Committee (SOOC). Sochi was selected as the host city in July 2007, during the 119th IOC Session held in Guatemala City. It was the first Olympics to be held in a CIS state after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union was previously the host nation for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

A record ninety-eight events in fifteen winter sport disciplines were held during the Games. A number of new competitions—a total of twelve accounting for gender—were held during the Games, including biathlon mixed relay, women’s ski jumping, mixed-team figure skating, mixed-team luge, half-pipe skiing, ski and snowboard slopestyle, and snowboard parallel slalom. The events were held around two clusters of new venues: an Olympic Park constructed in Sochi’s Imeretinsky Valley on the coast of the Black Sea, with Fisht Olympic Stadium, and the Games’ indoor venues located within walking distance; and snow events in the resort settlement of Krasnaya Polyana.

The 2014 Winter Olympics were the most expensive Games in the history of the Olympics. While originally budgeted at US$12 billion, major cost overruns caused this figure to expand to US$51 billion, more than three times the cost of the 2012 London Olympics and even surpassing the estimated cost of US$44 billion for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The 2014 Games achieved a record broadcast audience of 2.1 billion people worldwide.

In 2016, an independent report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency confirmed allegations that the Russian Olympic team had been involved in a state-sponsored doping program, active from at least late-2011 through August 2015. The program was active during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and athletes had benefited from the cover-up. The IOC stripped thirteen medals from Russian athletes in 2017, but nine were reinstated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. In December 2017, the IOC voted to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee, with an option for whitelisted athletes to compete independently during the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Russia (Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossiya), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a country in Eurasia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 144 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern; about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Russia’s capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world; other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa and Kazan.

Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.

The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus’ ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus’ lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus’. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east.

Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s first constitutionally socialist state. The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, and emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world’s first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world’s second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality and sole successor state of the Soviet Union. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic.

The Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russia’s extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. It is permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as a member of the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), along with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.