Time for Sochi to focus on athletes

Yards from its improbable palm-fringed seafront and attended by a president whose seven-year, £31bn dream was starting to unfold before his steely eyes, Sochi welcomed the Winter Olympics with an opening ceremony of fittingly exorbitant scale in the Fisht Stadium last night.

From a giant inflatable version of St Basil’s Cathedral to a seven-foot-one world champion boxer, the outrageous notion of hosting a Winter Olympics in a former Stalinist holiday hot-spot was reflected in a suitably bombastic two-and-a-half-hour extravaganza.

It started with a pre-show segment involving the Choir of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs gyrating to a version of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’, and peaked with the host nation’s athletes being soundtracked into the arena to the strains of a famous faux-lesbian pop anthem.