If you’re game for Sochi, the clock’s winding down

If you don’t already have a running start, your own Sochi Olympics bid will probably fall short. Though ticket sales will continue indefinitely, CoSport, the Games’ authorized U.S. ticket seller, expects to stop peddling lodging-and-ticket packages in mid-December. Moreover, American visitors must apply for a Russian visa, which can take weeks to obtain. Russian visa info is available at https://www.lat.ms/18bppMi. Advice from the State Department on Sochi travel: https://www.lat.ms/1eywKXM.

Here’s a quick overview of airfare, lodging and Olympic tickets:

Airfare: Flying between LAX and Sochi requires at least one stop (often Moscow) and typically takes more than 20 hours. With about 75 days remaining until the Feb. 7 opening ceremony, round-trip tickets from LAX to Sochi on Feb. 4 begin at $1,284 on Aeroflot (with some parts of the flight operated by Delta aircraft).

Lodging: About 20,000 hotel rooms have been built in greater Sochi in recent years, doubling the local supply. But Olympic officials have reserved large numbers of rooms for official delegations and others, causing low supply. Rooms at the Sochi coastal area’s three-star Zelenaya Roscha Hotel are fetching $395 a night during the Games. In its advice to U.S. Olympic visitors, the U.S. State Department cites advertised room rates as high as $750 to $1,000 a night. Instead of hunting for hotels separately, some American travelers book room-and-ticket packages through CoSport, ([877] 457-4647, https://www.cosport.com).

Tickets: Americans must use CoSport, which handled U.S. tickets for the 2012 London Games and many before that. The company has been selling Sochi tickets and ticket-and-hotel packages for much of the last year, mostly through its website. CoSport is also handling U.S. tickets for the Sochi Paralympic Games on March 7-16.

Some Olympic events are priced as low as $41, but the costliest event, the opening ceremony, is priced from $248 to $1,828. (As of Nov. 26, $793 through $1,828 seats remained in CoSport’s supply.)

The CoSport website (www.cosport.com) showed no individual tickets left for snowboarding, bobsleigh and skeleton events. For alpine and freestyle skiing events, eight of 10 days were sold out. Ample availability remained for biathlon, curling, ice hockey and ski jumping and the Feb. 23 closing ceremony ($497 to $793).

CoSport “will close the public sale of ticket and accommodation packages in mid-December,” but event tickets will remain on sale, said Michael Kontos of Hill & Knowlton, CoSport’s public relations company.

Many hotel-ticket options remained available on the CoSport website as of late November, though the prices might give most Americans pause.

A “premier” package included admission to events in three sports and three nights at the new, four-star Mercure Hotel at $9,420 per couple or $7,014 a person.

A single-sport package included tickets to three U.S. men’s preliminary hockey games and four nights at the four-star Pansionat Yuzhny-Hotel II in the Adler area at $9,564 per couple or $6,616 per person.