Freshly released satellite photos show empty stadiums and arenas primed and ready for the upcoming Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
The quadrennial games get underway in the ski resort town on February 9. A range of highly-detailed satellite images, snapped from space by Deimos Imaging, shows the venues ahead of their big debut next week.
The games organizers decided to build the 35,000-seater stadium without a roof to cut the cost of building the $58 million, pentagon shaped, arena.
Fears remain that the crowd, and the athletes, will be exposed to the extreme cold because of the lack of a cover over their heads. Organizers will be distributing blankets to keep people warm.
In total 13 venues will be used during the two week sporting extravaganza. The events will take place in PyeongChang and in the neighboring city of Gangneung. Several of the temporary venues are set to be dismantled after the games.
A record 102 gold medals will be up for grabs in 15 sports. Four events will be appearing at the games for the first time, these are: big air snowboarding, mixed doubles curling, mass start speed skating, and mixed team alpine skiing.
On Thursday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld the appeals of 28 Russian athletes and lifted their lifetime Olympic bans handed out by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for alleged doping violations.
The news was welcomed by the athletes. Skeleton racer Olga Potylitsina told RT that she was “overwhelmed with joy” at the ruling while Alexander Legkov described it as “the best news over the past two years.”
READ MORE: Russian athletes ‘overwhelmed with joy’ by CAS ruling to uphold Olympic appeals
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