The XXII Olympic Winter Games were held from 7 to 23 February 2014 in Sochi, Russia. The 2014 Olympic Winter Games were the first time that the Russian Federation hosted the Winter Games; the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.
Sochi was elected as the host city at the 119th IOCÂ Session in Guatemala City on 4 July 2007.
Twelve new events were contested during the Winter Games: Team Figure Skating, Luge Relay, Biathlon Mixed Relay, Women’s Ski Jumping, Snowboard and Ski Slopestyle, Ski Half-pipe, and Snowboard Parallel Slalom.
The Winter Games were organized in two clusters: a coastal cluster for ice events in Sochi, and a mountain cluster located in the Krasnaya Polyana Mountains for skiing and sliding sports. This made it one of the most compact Games ever, with around 30 minutes travel time from the coastal to the mountain cluster.
The Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort, built from 2003 to 2011, hosted the Alpine Skiing events for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.
Maria Höfl-Riesch completed a successful defense of her Super Combined title in Sochi 2014. Nicole Hosp and Julia Mancuso rounded up the podium.
Winning her second successive Olympic Super Combined gold medal, Hoefl-Riesch confirmed her status as the most complete skier of her generation. She had won the past three major international Super Combined races, adding gold at Sochi 2014 to her Vancouver 2010 gold medal and her Super Combined world championship title in 2013. With a further Olympic gold medal in the Slalom from the Vancouver 2010 Games and a Slalom world championship gold in 2009, Hoefl-Riesch undeniably sits at the summit of the Alpine World.
Tina Maze and Dominique Gisin had made headlines by becoming the first Alpine skiers in history to share gold in the Women’s Downhill. Lara Gut was just 0.10 seconds away from making it a three-way golden podium, taking bronze. Maze also won the first-ever gold medal for Slovenia at the Winter Games.
Anna Fenninger won the gold medal in the Super-G. With 24-year-old she won Austria's fourth Olympic gold in the event, finishing ahead of Maria Hoefl-Riesch and teammate Nicole Hosp. It was her first Olympic medal.
Eighteen of the 49 competitors did not finish, including seven of the first eight racers on the course.
The Giant Slalom event was won by Tina Maze, who had won the silver medal in 2010 in Vancouver. Silver was won by Anna Fenninger, and the defending Olympic Champion, Viktoria Rebensburg, was third.
In the second-to-last Alpine Skiing event in Sochi 2014, Mikaela Shiffrin beat the Austrian duo of Marlies Schild and Kathrin Zettel. At 18 years and 345 days, Shiffrin became the youngest-ever woman to win an Alpine Skiing gold. Shiffrin ended the season as the reigning Olympic, World Cup, and World Champion in Slalom.
Schild won a silver medal in Combined and a bronze medal in the Slalom in Torino 2006. In 2010 in Vancouver, She improved to another silver in the Slalom, and she repeated position in 2014 in the Slalom at Sochi.
In the Men's Super Combined Sandro Viletta surprised all the favourites to take the gold. Ivica Kostelic, the favorite after the Downhill run, finished in second place. Christof Innerhofer rounded up the podium in third place.
Matthias Mayer further contributed to a successful Alpine season for the Austrians, by landing the Men’s Downhill gold in the first race of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games. He finished 0.06 seconds ahead of Christof Innerhofer with Kjetil Jansrud snatching bronze. None of the three medallists won a World Cup Downhill race in the 2013-2014 season before the Winter Games. Mayer won after Sochi 2014 the Final Downhill in Lenzerheide.
Kjetil Jansrud won Norway's fourth consecutive Olympic Super-G gold medal, completing his Olympic medal set.
Andrew Weibrecht won the silver medal in the Super-G to add it to his Super-G bronze in Vancouver 2010.
With 36 years Bode Miller became the oldest ever skier to feature on an Alpine podium at the Games, when he won the bronze medal, his sixth Olympic medal in total, in the Men’s Super-G. Miller became the first US skier to win medals at three different Olympic Games.
Joint bronze medallist Jan Hudec became the first Canadian skier to win an Olympic medal in an event other than Downhill and the first of his compatriots to win an Olympic Alpine Skiing medal in 20 years.
Ted Ligety confirmed in Sochi his position as one of the greatest Giant Slalom skiers of all time with a dominant display to win Olympic gold. He finished ahead of surprise silver medallist Steve Missillier and bronze Alexis Pinturault.
Mario Matt became, at 34 years and 10 months, the oldest skier of either gender to win an Alpine Skiing race at the Winter Games. He caused a sensation by winning the Men's Slalom and taking his first Olympic medal beating big favorite Marcel Hirscher. Matt, a two-time Slalom World Champion, proved unbeatable in both runs, to close the Alpine Skiing events at the Sochi Games.
Henrik Kristoffersen won the bronze medal in slalom at Rosa Khutor at age 19 to become the youngest male medalist in Olympic alpine skiing history.
