It is the first major test of the slopes, with the women's Alpine World Cup taking place the following weekend.

The United States' skiing champion Bode Miller (pictured), who won a gold medal at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, said: "The venue, the mountain, is world class.

"It's as nice as any of the places we ever go.

"I think it's going to be amazing to host the Olympics here.

"I hope that they really do as good a job as they can because the Olympics is the perfect opportunity to showcase a venue, an area, a culture and country, and I think Russia right now is very due for that.

"A lot of people still have a lot of misconceptions about the area, and they don't think of ski areas when they think of Russia."

The negative for Miller was that the course would not necessarily suit his style.

"There's not one place where you're not going hard edge-to-edge except for this road just before this second-to-last jump into the finish," he said.

"Because you're so tall and you're legs are long, you're not tucking at all."


Erik Guay, Jan Hudec and Ben Thomsen, who make up Canada's alpine team, have also been testing the course this week, and generally gave it a positive review.

"It's a really nice track and I think they could have set a really cool course on it," said Guay.

"Unfortunately, it's a little bit tight and turny for a downhill.

"But it is what it is and you have to make the best of it.

"There are some great sections to it with some really nice jumps; big, long jumps with great landings."

"The big mountain terrain is amazing and the run they have our downhill on is one of the coolest downhills we've ever had in ski racing," added Hudec.

"It has enough gates, amazing turn features and there's the possibility for huge jumps.

"One of the jumps we were hitting is 60-plus metres of flight with no issues [with] the landings.

"It can be a really good venue for spectators because of the jumps and the different terrain changes."

The World Cup includes downhill and super combined.

Hubec said: "[The downhill] has the scenery and the terrain to make it a classic downhill."


Swiss downhill specialist Didier Cuche (pictured) was another fan.

"It's a magnificent course," he said.

"Perhaps a little bit too turning, it could be adapted a little bit to change that.

"The first 40 seconds or so it resembles more a super-G than a downhill, albeit a very fast super-G.

"They have managed to shape the course around the mountain in a really nice way."

Aksel Svindal, Norway's two-time World Cup winner, was also full of praise for the course he described as "tough."

"I think a lot of guys were surprised at inspection this morning," he said.

"It's kind of what downhill is all about — the mountain kind of sets the pace."

Rosa Khutor has the capacity for 10,000 spectators.

The ski slopes were designed by Swiss downhill Olympic gold medallist Bernhard Russi.

Located on the Aibga ridge near Krasnaya Polyana, the test event being conducted coincides with the visit of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission's latest visit to assess the preparations for Sochi 2014.

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