Winter Olympic Games projects are completing in succession, winter sports gain popularity

On January 19, Beijing greeted its first snow of the year. In the winter sunshine, the National Speed Skating Oval is covered in silver, and appears especially dazzling. Since it is encircled by 22 glittering and translucent ribbon-shaped bent glass curtain wall, this venue also receives the name "the Ice Ribbon". Currently, the National Speed Skating Oval has reached completion. The "Ice Ribbon", "Bird's Nest", and "Water Cube" bring out the best in one another. Together, they constitute the landmark architectural complex of Beijing, the first city in the world to hold both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.

As we are approaching the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, construction of different venues and warm-up activities are receiving greater attention. As of now, the landmark architecture for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, the National Speed Skating Oval ("the Ice Ribbon") has been completed. The National Indoor Stadium and the National Aquatics Center ("the Water Cube) have also finished their transformations.

Reporters learned from the Chaoyang district of Beijing that Chaoyang will have 13 venues and facilities for the Winter Olympic Games in total. It will host the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games, and has 3 competition venues and 10 non-competition facilities.

Walking into the National Speed Skating Oval, which is 33-meters high and can accommodate 12,000 people, the blue wall corresponds with the alternating dark-blue and light-blue colors of the seats. The home field has an area of 80,000 square meters, and employed complete ice surface design. The venue can receive over 2,000 people to carry out ice hockey, speed skating, figure skating, curling, and other ice-sports simultaneously. After the Games, it can be used sustainably.

What is surprising about the National Speed Skating Oval is that it is also an intelligent venue. Based on the construction of 5G networks, the venue adopted "the integration of indoor and outdoor GPS system" and other technologies. This is like equipping the venue with an "intelligent brain". With this brain, the National Speed Skating Oval can provide digitalized, high quality, and individualized watching experiences and ample service assurance to audiences, competition organizers and participants in the future.

To the southeast of the Ice Ribbon, the National Aquatics Center has also realized the transition from "Water Cube" to "Ice Cube".

During the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, the National Aquatics Center will serve as the competing venue for curling and wheelchair curling. It also built two ice surfaces in the underground space of its south square. One is a standard skating rink, the other is a curling venue. As the experience base for the curling program at the Olympic center region, it will provide an open platform to the public.

At the same time, the National Indoors Stadium has also finished its transformation. For the Winter Olympic Games, it added an ice-making function and a dehumidification system, and constructed a new hockey hall in its north side as a training center, with changing rooms and other facilities. The total area of the reconstructed venue is around 98,000 square meters, with two hockey ice surfaces that conform to the standards of the Olympic Games. One is for the actual competitions at the Olympic Games, and the other will be used for training and war ingup before competition.

Since the Winter Olympic Games entered Beijing times, Chaoyang district used the three modules of promotion, experience, and competition to continuously popularize winter sports. With abundant winter sports venues and sites, every year it organizes over 100 community winter Olympic games and activities for everyone to enter the skating rink. The direct participation of Chaoyang residents in winter sports activities has reached over 1 million person-times, and 190,000 people have taken part in winter sports publicity, education and training.

In popularizing knowledge regarding the Winter Olympic Games and publicizing ice sports, Chaoyang district actively responded to the call to "mobilize 300 million people to participate in winter sports", together with Zhangjiakou City of Hebei Province, they have entered communities, parks, institutions, and public places to continue to spread the knowledge and impact of Winter Olympic Games and enhance people's awareness of winter sports and how to watch games.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Chaoyang district will advance in the brand building of the "area of the two Olympic Games", take advantage of the unique advantage of being the first "two Olympic Games" area in the world, continue to consolidate the comprehensive protection as well as development and utilization of the heritages of both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, to realize the goal of sharing the Olympic heritages with the people.

Contributed by Dong Cheng, Zhang Jinghua, reporters of Guangming Daily

Translated by Zhang Junye