China's Winter Sports Development In Full Swing

National Public Ice and Snow Season opens in Tianjin

The sixth National Public Ice and Snow Season opened on Dec 12 in North China's municipality of Tianjin and will run till February. A total of 3,500 local citizens as well as leading ice and snow athletes joined the opening ceremony.

Gou Zhongwen, director of the General Administration of Sport, said that the event will boost the popularity of snow and ice sports from North China to the southern and eastern parts of China. After the ceremony, a number of events will be staged around China.

An ice and snow carnival also kicked off concurrently with the opening ceremony of the snow season, at the north square of the Olympics Center and the front square of the Tianjin Sports Center in Tianjin, with an area of 20,000 square meters, comprising areas for performance, entertainment and sports venues.

The twin squares were decorated into snow and ice parks, which are favored by local citizens.

Olympic Officials tour Beijing venues

nternational Olympic Committee Vice President Juan Antonio Samaranch and officials from different international winter sports federations visited Beijing this week to see how the preparation is going for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. FIS Secretary General Sarah Lewis, onsite for the FIS big air World Cup in Beijing, joined the tour.

The officials first arrived at the National Winter Sports Training Base in Fengtai district. The training base was converted from an old factory and put into use in September. Inside it has two standard ice rinks and a 400-meter speed skating rink. Olympic gold medalist and coach Wang Meng trains speed skaters there, and she gave a tour to the officials who later complimented the training site.

Their second stop was the Gaojin Road community in Shijingshan district. The community was named Beijing's first "Winter Olympics Community" in May because of the residents' enthusiasm for integrating winter sports into their traditional culture. Retired seniors there draw Winter Olympics-themed pictures and make paper-cuttings with Winter Olympics elements.

"Let me put it in very simple terms; this is [the] legacy of the Olympic Games even before the Olympic Games. The city and the citizens and the Beijing people are already enthusiastic about winter sports. So, good for them and good for us. It's a great, great legacy... even before the Games start," Juan Antonio Samaranch said after the tour.

The tour ended at a primary school in Shijingshan, where the officials changed the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics countdown clock with the students. They also joined them in Winter Olympics-themed curriculum, as well as a small tour of the school's Winter Olympics museum.

"The long-term legacy is well and truly up and running, which means that when the Games come around, there's already more knowledge, more interest, more excitement. The spectators will be able to understand better what they are looking at, and more youngsters will continue with winter sports activities," Lewis said after the tour.