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Link: James Hill’s Photos of Sochi, Russia, Site of the Winter Olympics - NYTimes.com](http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/dreaming-of-a-white-winter-olympics/)

A few hours before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke at a ceremony in the Bolshoy Ice Dome in Sochi in February, marking a year to the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, I was watching pensioners strip to the waist and bask in the midday sunshine on a beach a few miles from the Olympic Park.