Can 2022 fever drive 300 million people into winter sports?

Over recent years China has expressed the ambition to encourage around 3 million people, nearly 1/5 of the country’s population, to participate in winter sports, or snow and ice sports, especially after winning the bid of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics Games.

But despite the developments over the past few years China still has a long way to go to become a winter sports powerhouse.

One of the biggest challenges that China faces is shortage in ice arenas or ski resorts. Currently the ice sports venues or snow fields available are mostly confined in span-Beijing and Northeastern China. But even in Beijing, with 20 million inhabitants, the number of ice venues is merely twenty below. If no significant amount of arenas were to be structured, there would be less opportunities for more residents to take part in winter sports.

Additionally, China would be in great need for trainers in winter sports as 80% of the Chinese who participate in skiing are beginners. Beijing and Zhang Jiakou are expected to have around 17 million potential person-times of participation in skiing in the next 25 years after the 2022 bid. So there is a huge gap needing to be filled up between participants and trainers.

In the meantime, it is relatively expensive to take part in winter sports. Taking trainings in hockey in Beijing, for instance, usually costs RMB40-RMB50 thousand, which could be a burden for many families. And it would cost much more if the parents plan to send the children abroad to get trained in winter sports as Song Andong’s parents did several years ago.

Given that most of the families could afford to participate in winter sports, there would still be a huge question mark about whether the children would get enough matches to grow.

Overall, China still needs to take advantage of the big boosts from 2022 Winter Olympic Games and to implement a nationwide program to encourage more people into winter sports. In this case, the Winter Olympics Games fever wouldn’t last long but the passion for sport would hopefully do.

Source: Netease