“Legacy of the Olympic Games”: Virtual Class with the London Metropolitan University

 On February, 19 the topic of the Olympics legacy was continued within a virtual class with the London Metropolitan University. This issue is quite pressing both for our country and the United Kingdom as its citizens know firsthand the destiny of Olympic venues when the Games are over. The first speech was given by our teacher Uliana Savelyeva who talked on the Olympics organization in general, on the funding of some sports venues and other infrastructure. The consecutive interpretation into Italian was performed by the MA student Anastasiya Lopatchenko. The next speaker was our guest Adele Tobin who told us about the contradictory choice of Sochi as an Olympics Capital trying to prove that in fact this choice was not as contradictory as it seemed to be. Lidiya Yaitskova interpreted this speech from English intro Russian. A speech in Chinese was presented as well and it was interpreted by Dariya Ledovskaya. The Chinese speaker also gave us some statistics concerning the Olympic budget in several countries and told us about the use of Olympic venues after the Games having finished. Finally the last (but not the least) speech was presented by a speaker from London who talked on the destiny of the Olympic venues after the Games. The speech touched upon a question to what extent the government’s efforts to cover the expenses and to get some social and economic benefits were successful. This speech was interpreted from English into Russian by Viktor Shamov.

The LondonMet students also interpreted presented speeches and, as well as our MA students, were commented on by both Astrakhan and LondonMet teachers.