Military police officers at a train station in Sochi. — Fans of downhill skiing would be forgiven for thinking they had arrived at a military base when showing up in Sochi for the Winter Olympics. Ticket holders must walk under an array of cameras hooked up to face-recognition software before traversing the checkpoints and the mesh fences to make their way beyond the armed guards. If picked out, they then have to step into a full-body scanner.

All spectators must pass through metal detectors twice and present their documents three times.

"The guests are the lucky ones," said a man who works for a logistics company that helped organize the opening ceremony. "The staff isn’t. I spend hours getting through security checks every day." While heightened scrutiny is the norm at such events, the edges are sharper in the Russian Black Sea resort town following a spate of terrorist bombings that killed more than 30 people.

An Islamic militant group last week posted a video threatening to deliver a "present" for visitors to Sochi, which was sealed off on January 7 as Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to do everything to make the games safe without "depressing participants".

The government has deployed 40,000 police and special services officers. "Of course these measures are a bit annoying," said the head of Russia’s curling federation,  Dmitry Svishev. "But then you think about what efforts are taken to guarantee the safety[…]