Leopard, polar bear and hare chosen mascots of 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics

PanARMENIAN.Net - Leopard, polar bear and hare were chosen mascots of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in a nationwide vote, which finished on Saturday and registered an unprecedented 1.4 million phone calls and SMS messages, the head of the expert jury said on February 27.

"I still can't believe it: we have received about 1.4 million calls and SMSs," Konstantin Ernst, who is also general director of Russia's largest TV broadcaster Channel One, said.

"Usual figures for such shows are 18,000-30,000. Our figures are unprecedented for the domestic television and are evidence of how seriously Russians perceive the forthcoming Olympics," he said.

Russians submitted sketches of about 24,000 candidates to the official website of the 2014 Olympic Games mascot. Only 13 characters, including dolphin, polar and brown bears, matryoshka dolls, snowflake and bullfinch, made it into the final.

Following the results of the contest, the leopard, the polar bear and the hare gathered a total of 62% of the votes, with 28% cast in favor of the leopard, 18% in favor of the polar bear and 16% in favor of the hare.

The winners were announced during a 115-minute evening TV show on Channel One, RIA Novosti reported.

Fire Boy and Snowflake were selected mascots for the Paralympics.

A nationwide competition to find a mascot for the 2014 Olympics kicked off on September 1, 2010. The mascot "should encompass a range of features characteristic of Russia, and at the same time be intelligible to people of every age, profession and nationality," organizers said earlier.