The Black Sea resort of Sochi is to be transformed into a wintersports area for the 2014 Winter Olympics at a reported cost of 950bn roubles.

Dmitry Chernyshenko, boss of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, will head up the planning and construction of a new new winter community in the North Caucasus mountains, the construction of 300 kilometres of roads, 100km of rail, 39 tunnels and 24 thermal and hydro power stations.

Mr Chernyshenko, a native of Sochi who was handed the games' baton five years ago, said, “We are well on track. Our construction site is now probably competing in terms of size with London's. It is a most challenging situation."

Government ministers have reported that Russia's overall games investment is close to 950 billion roubles.

But Mr Chernyshenko says the construction and infrastructure budget is 185bn roubles, with about half of that coming from private investors. He also says the budget for staging the actual games event is 60 billion roubles.

"The main questions since 2005 have been about the budget. But funding for staging the event will come from our highly successful marketing programme,” he added.

Organisers are currently discussing ways of overcoming any raising of global temperatures, which caused so many issues for the Winter Games in Vancouver in February this year. The Vancouver games endured weather postponements and delays at the alpine events in Whistler. The organisers were also forced to cancel 28,000 standing-room tickets at Cypress Mountain due to warm weather and lack of snow.