International Olympic Committee has done something terrible – it has chosen Russian health resort Sochi as the host for Winter Olympic Games of 2014.

Today I’m grieving. The town I was born in will soon turn into the biggest dump in the area. This night Sochi was announced to become the capital of the Olympic Games, world-famous sport competitions, dating from ancient times.

You may wonder why I’m not celebrating the news about the biggest party in the world coming to my town, and I’ll tell you why. Territories, surrounding Sochi, which are subject for building athletic facilities and necessary infrastructure, are unique natural reserve park, and I bet wild boars and bisons won’t be waiting in the queue to settle and give birth to their little ones in areas with active engineering, buzzing vehicles and people wandering all around. Another state protected area begins several kilometers from Krasnaya Polyana – Caucasus natural reserve with unique mineral springs and Caucasian goats, enhabiting the wilderness aroung skiing resort. People can move to another settlement, but animals cannot, they have nowhere to go. I’ve heard state authorities promising nothing would happen to natural treasures, but I don’t believe them, neither do people, living in Sochi.

I have another question, which I consider to be quite reasonable – Sochi lies in humid subtropical zone, and you won’t find such remarkably mild climate anywhere in Russia. Why the emperor of winter sports comes to town, where average winter tempertures almost never fall below zero Centigrade? Are we going to defeat global warming and to bring North Pole’s frosty breath (or South Pole’s, it’s even colder) to the Caucasus?

The town itself is eighty per cent natural reserve, established in its dawn, as far as I remember, that is why the resort has one main road and several minor ones piercing it. Thus, many roads are required to meet the requirements of thousands of thousands of visitors – this can be done by cutting down town’s green parks with 800-year-old trees and lawns, boasting endangered plant species.

Rumors said that there was no chance for Sochi to lose the battle for the Olympics – too much money was invested here to reach the goal. Ugly habitable skyscrapers appear here as fast as mushrooms after rain, and prices for apartments there are enormous; imagine what would they become in two or three years after the crucial decision of the International Olympic Committee they would definitely hit the sky.

What are city dwellers, whose average income is far from one’s dreams, going to do now? Perhaps they would have workplaces for several years, but they would find themselves back at the bottom of the ladder, when the fuss around the Games ends. City population worries about their children and houses. They are afraid that the gateway to the future, which is now open, will end in disaster. People of Sochi are grieving with me.