The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi - Stadiums: 2014 vs. 2010

There are many differences between each Olympics every year. For one, they are never consecutively hosted in the same country or city and the medal placings, of course, change from year to year. However, a main difference between each of the occuring Olympic Games are the buildings used to host those Games. Often, the cities that host invest immense amounts of resources towards building new, fantastic stadiums for the international event and often, these buildings differ from country to country. One only has to look at Vancouver's BC Place Stadium and Sochi's Fisht Olympic Stadium for such a comparison. In factors such as appearance and the time took to build both vary considerably.

Firstly, let us look locally towards Vancouver. The BC Place Stadium is, of course, not new. In fact, it is very old. The stadium was constructed in 1981 in which it was completed in 1983. The construction we're familiar with, however, took place on May 4, 2010. This was for the installation of a new, retractable roof:

Other things to note are the fact that BC Place has an oval design. This is to coincide with the various football and soccer matches that take place here. In this way, it has a lot in common with other stadiums across the world. Aesthetically, it's not anything unique, however, the fact it is situated in such a way that it is both surrounded by city and water is truely beautiful.

Meanwhile in Sochi, we have the Fisht Olympic Stadium. This stadium was built recently and, for now, solely for the Olympics. Being contructed and opened in 2013, the Fisht has certainly established itself fairly quickly and charmingly:

While the Russian stadium has been argued to have been built too fast, its results are absoulutely stunning. Not your typical stadium, the exterior in itself is pleasing to the eyes. However, the surrounding area around the stadium is somewhat... Stale. Maybe that's a good thing considering it's a very eye-catching building in itself, but up close the stadium seems too empty. But still, incredibly beautiful.