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Children prepare for a unique experience. They are dressed for battle, with thick padded coats, helmets, and boots with protruding blades. They are here to conquer the ice.
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| The 60 students are taking their first ice skating class. [Photo/bjd.com.cn] |
The students come from a local school, called the Zhenzhuquan Primary School. The natural outdoor skating rink, created on an upstream section of the Caishi River where they train and have fun, has a total area of 1,500 square meters and thick, good quality ice. It was adopted as a base for promoting ice sports, set up by the school and supported by the district education committee and the village government in Yanqing district, Beijing.
This is the first ice arena put into use this winter in Yanqing district and is available to the general public. There are 10 more projects scheduled to be completed that will offer an ice skating experience to an estimated 3,000 people annually.
Yanqing district, northwest of Beijing, 90 kilometres away from the city center, has showed more passion and received more governmental support for ice sports since it became one of the three venues for luge, bobsleigh, and alpine skiing competitions during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.
"Ice" opportunities like what has happened in Yanqing have come along with the Winter Olympics to Beijing and Zhangjiakou in Hebei province, the other venue for the Winter Olympics, about 220 km from downtown Beijing.
The world's top snowboarding event "Air & Style" and a number of other high-level international events for curling, ice hockey, and figure skating will be held in Beijing, according to officials from the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau.
As for Zhangjiakou, it will hold international skiing competitions such as the FIS Alpine Skiing Far East Cup, the FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup, and so on, so as to gather experience and to prepare for the 2022 Winter Olympic.
