VIDEO – Olympic Games: the passion of the Chinese for surprising sliding sports

Here we are at Lake Shichahai, in Beijing. It is a vast lake not far from the Forbidden City, we are in the heart of Beijing. The lake is completely frozen and transformed into a giant ice rink. And the Pekingese, every winter, it’s a tradition, go to this lake to try their hand at sliding sports. So, we are a bit far from the Olympic competitions, it is simply a hobby, but it is a particularity of this place, the ice is thick enough to be practiced with ice skates (see video in illustration of this article ).

You can see sledges there, to say the least, it’s a fairly rudimentary sled system, they are halves of a bicycle transformed into large ice skates with a skate blade in front and a bicycle wheel behind. And we pedal. And that’s how we get around on this lake.

In China, 300 million skiers

The passion of the Chinese for sliding sports is very recent. In 2015, when Beijing obtained the organization of these 2022 Games, there were very few skiers in the country. But very quickly, the government embarked on a vast promotion of winter sports. According to official government statistics, there are currently 300 million Chinese who practice skiing. But not always in a very orthodox way.

For example, we went to Ski Now, where there are fake indoor ski slopes made up of carpet and a treadmill on which you slide with skis or monoskis (see video illustration) .

The JO effect but not only

The Chinese are more and more interested in winter sports. It’s the JO effect But not only. It is also the fact that the Chinese government is investing a lot in this area. More than 1,000 ski resorts are planned, half of which have already been completed. It is already three times more than in France.

A thousand ice rinks are also planned, with one in each major city in China and growing curiosity, especially among young Chinese.