{"id":70825,"date":"2011-02-28T10:31:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T06:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=70825"},"modified":"2011-02-28T10:34:17","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T06:34:17","slug":"sochi-2014-winter-olympics-mascot-ripped-off-from-moscow-1980-olympics-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/02\/28\/sochi-2014-winter-olympics-mascot-ripped-off-from-moscow-1980-olympics-bear.html","title":{"rendered":"Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics Mascot ‘Ripped Off’ from Moscow 1980 Olympics Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia unveiled its mascots for the 2014 Winter Olympics\u00a0on Saturday in a controversial announcement that drew charges of plagiarism and claims that Prime Minster Vladimir used strongman tactics to get his favorite among the winners.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0three mascots \u2013 a grinning polar bear, a cuddly hare and a snowboarding leopard \u2013 were selected\u00a0during a live broadcast on Russia’s main television station, Channel One, reports NY Daily News.<\/p>\n

The games will be held in Sochi, a resort city on Russia’s Black Sea coast.<\/p>\n

Television viewers supposedly picked the winners from a pool of 10 candidates by calling or sending text messages to the station.<\/p>\n

But whispers of vote rigging began after voting for the front-runner, a cartoon portrayal of Father Christmas Ded Moroz, a holiday folk figure similar to Santa Clause, plummeted in favor of the snow leopard, which Putin had praised as “strong, fast and beautiful” and called his “symbolic choice.”<\/p>\n

“Just after Vladimir Putin showed his sympathy for the leopard, its votes climbed sharply,” Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told Moscow Echo radio.<\/p>\n

Bloggers in Russia called the announcement a fraud and claimed the telephone system was rigged because the leopard was badly trailing Ded Moroz and several other designs when the voting opened, according to AFP.<\/p>\n

Later, the artist who designed the bear mascot for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow said the polar bear ripped off his design.<\/p>\n

“This polar bear, everything is taken from mine, the eyes, nose, mouth, smile. I don’t like being robbed,” Viktor Chizhikov told the radio station.<\/p>\n

Chizhikov’s mascot, nicknamed Misha,\u00a0was a brown bear who wore a belt featuring the Olympics’ five interlocking rings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia unveiled its mascots for the 2014 Winter Olympics on Saturday in a controversial announcement that drew charges of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[22655,22657,22656,10229,22654],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70825"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}