Proposed venues for 2022 Winter Olympic approved by sports federations

All proposed venues for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing and Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, have been approved by the related international winter sports federations, the bid committee announced.

All seven federations - including the International Ski Federation, the International Skating Union, the World Curling Federation, the International Ice Hockey Federation, the International Biathlon Union, the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation and the International Luge Federation - have given the thumbs-up to the venues in Beijing and Zhangjiakou's Chongli county, said Zhao Yinggang, deputy secretary-general of the bid committee, during the opening ceremony of the 14th China Chongli International Skiing Festival on Saturday in Chongli.

To promote the bid for the 2022 Winter Games, Zhao said the bid committee has laid out a blueprint for the development of winter sports from 2014 to 2022. A series of activities on snow and ice has been planned by the committee, the General Administration of Sport and the Hebei provincial government.

Beijing and Kazakhstan's Almaty are the only two remaining candidates for the 2022 Winter Games. The host city will be selected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on July 31, 2015, at the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Should Beijing win the bid, six snow events - ski jumping, biathlon, cross-country skiing, freestyle skiing, snowboarding and the Nordic combined - will be held in Chongli, a well-known ski resort in the country.

Other snow events, including alpine skiing, bobsleigh, skeleton and luge, are planned to be held in Beijing's suburban Yanqing county. All ice events - curling, figure skating, ice hockey, speed skating and short-track speed skating - will be held in stadiums in Beijing.