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The President visited one of the lecture theatres and looked over a small exhibition presenting literary works devoted to the Olympics. Mr Putin also addressed the university’s staff and students.

The Russian International Olympic University took around three years to build. The campus is located in Sochi city centre and includes classroom and office buildings and a hotel and recreation building. It is designed for a total intake of up to 500 students at any one time, with up to 2,000 students graduating every year from all different study programmes, including short-term courses.

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Speech at Russian International Olympic University

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, friends,

Today marks the start of the school year at the newly erected building of the Russian International Olympic University. It gives me great pleasure to congratulate its students and instructors on this truly noteworthy event. In essence, this is a unique centre for training professionals in the field of sports and fitness.

Our main International Olympic Committee curators – Mr Jean-Claude Killy and Mr Gilbert Felli – are here with us today. They supported the idea of creating this university from the very beginning and are members of its board of trustees.

Gentlemen, I would like to use this occasion to thank you one more time for your instrumental help in creating this university and express my hope that our cooperation will continue after 2014.

Russia has enormous and serious plans in the area of sports and fitness. It is certainly one of our social policy priorities. We see it as an excellent opportunity to show people the value of a healthy lifestyle, sports and active recreation, and encourage people – particularly youth – to regularly participate in sports, to help create good, positive reference points in life.

At the same time, it is clear that in addition to major financial and administrative efforts, resolving such issues also requires competent management. Thus, training the kinds of professionals who will be taught here, at this university, is a highly important task.

Modern sports are a complicated, diverse area of activity, requiring knowledge in economics, finance, medicine and culture. Professionals in this field must be adaptable, driven by a desire to constantly improve and capable of predicting new trends in sports.

The university where you are beginning to work and study, the university we have established, in part because it was our promise to do so, as stated in Sochi’s Olympic bid, will train highly qualified and skilled professionals in sports management.

We have always regarded it as one of the primary objectives of the Winter Olympic Games’ legacy and I am very pleased to note that we have fulfilled our promise.

The University will become Russia’s main centre for training and retraining sports and fitness managers, and a place for developing unique educational programmes, which will be based on enormous experience of the global Olympic community.

Naturally, much like athletic activity itself, the university will be open to all who share the ideals of sports and healthy living, regardless of citizenship, religious affiliation or political outlook. We will make every effort to ensure that it becomes one of the global leaders in training managers for the global sports industry. I am confident that we will achieve many great things together.

I want to once again congratulate everyone here and all those who were directly involved in creating this university. Naturally, I want to express gratitude to Mr Potanin and his company, Interros, for supporting this project from the very beginning and bringing it to fruition. I recall how we argued about the university’s location, but what matters in the end is that all our plans were carried out and all our promises were fulfilled.

Thank you very much and once again, congratulations.