Plan for sustainable post-Olympics venue use

The Genting Snow Park in Chongli county of Zhangjiakou, is a popular destination for skiing amateurs and professionals. It will be refurnished for the 2022 Olympics bid. Gong Lei / Xinhua

Four snow sports disciplines, including alpine skiing, bobsled and luge, will be staged at the proposed National Alpine Ski Center and National Sliding Center, which will be developed into high-level training bases and public skiing and tourism centers in mountainous regions in Yanqing.

The rest of the skiing events will be staged at the new Nordic and Biathlon Center as well as the refurnished Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou, which plans to build on the 2022 legacy and further develop after the Games.

Zhang Li, deputy director of the planning and technology department of the Beijing 2022 bid committee, shrugged off concerns over the geographic distances between venue clusters, saying that convenient transportation networks would be in place.

"The layout of the venues in the three zones will not only alleviate the pressure on the post-Games use, but also maximally benefit the development of winter sports in and around Beijing as more people will have the chance to use Olympic facilities after 2022," said Zhang.

Located along the Yanshan Mountain northwest of Beijing, the Yanqing and Zhangjiakou zones have vertical drops, rugged mountain terrain and the correct climate conditions for high-quality artificial snow trails for snow sports competitions, according to the bid committee.

"Even some world-famous ski destinations in Europe are less suitable than Beijing's surrounding mountain areas for making clean, high-quality snow," said Mojca Ogris-Schimberg, a senior manager at snow-making machine manufacturer DemacLenko.

Patrick Danielsson, general manager of Italian snow making company TechnoAlpin's branch in China, echoed Ogris-Schimberg.

"The conditions (in Beijing) meet the requirements (of the International Ski Federation) for international events, and they are better than in Sochi (the Russian city that hosted the last Winter Olympics)."

sunxiaochen@chinadaily.com.cn