Bulgaria's capital Sofia is now out of the race for hosting the Winter Olympic Games in 2014 after the International Olympic Committee shortlisted three of the candidates.

Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, Austria's Salzburg, South Korea's Pyeongchang, - all three cities pointed as favourites were selected by the IOC Executive Board as the Candidate Cities for the XXII Olympic Winter Games in 2014.

IOC's Working Group concluded "Jaca, Sofia and Borjomi do not have the requisite level of capability at this time to host the 2014 Olympic Winter Games."

We are pleased with the decision that was reached through a unanimous consensus. We congratulate the three Candidate Cities and thank the other four Applicant Cities for their hard work and enthusiasm. We look forward to a fair and exciting competition, IOC President Jacques Rogge said.

All in all, seven Applicant Cities, Sochi, Salzburg, Jaca, Almaty, PyeongChang, Sofia and Borjomi had, before Thursday's decision, gone through the first phase, which consisted of a detailed assessment by an IOC Working Group of each city's ability to organise the Winter Games.

IOC explained that with the cut in the number of candidate Cities, it wants to avoid those cities, which do not yet have the full capacity to host the Olympic Games going through the whole bidding process. The major organization also vowed to give the cities that did not enter the second phase pointers about improvements that would be needed in order to have a better chance to successfully bid for the Games in the future.

A Bulgarian delegation was in Lausanne to back Sofia's bid. The delegation included Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov, Stefka Kostadinova, chair of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee, State Sports Agency chair Vessela Lecheva, Mario Al-Jebouri, head of the State Tourism Agency.

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