Russian athletes who won gold medals at the Sochi Winter Olympics have each been rewarded with a Mercedes GL-Class SUV worth $146,500.

Ski-jumper Severin Freund welcomed the World Cup back to action with open arms, claiming victory in Falun, Sweden.

Canadian athletes lead the medal charge at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games after 10 events in the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, though incredible podium sweeps by the US men's slopestyle team and the French ski cross team proved to be two of the Games' biggest stories.

Russia secured the top position in the NOC medal table at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games by claiming all the medals in cross country skiing's men's 50km mass start event.

The Olympic debut of parallel slalom at the XXII Olympic Winter Games at Sochi provided a spectacular men's event with Vic Wild (RUS) crowning himself double Olympic Champion edging off Zan Kosir (SLO) and Benjamin Karl (AUT) to second and third in front of a roaring home crowd.

The closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics on Sunday night took viewers through what organizers called an artistic look at Russian culture before International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach closed what he called the "Athletes' Games."

Yesterday, 25 February, in Falun (Sweden) the 15-th World Cup in ski jumping began.

The alpine skier from Lichtenstein Tina Weirather who injured her leg during a training at the Olympic Games Sochi-2014 announced the end of the season.

Austrian ski jumper Thomas Morgenstern will skip the remaining 10 World Cup events this season in order to rest after recovering in time from a ski flying crash to compete at the Sochi Olympics.

Austrian Nordic skier Johannes Duerr has apologised for taking performance enhancing drugs ahead of competing in the Sochi Winter Games, the exposure of which resulted in him being kicked off the Olympic team and called a "scoundrel" by colleagues.