Rio is SO 2016, Beijing Already Stoked for 2022
China's athletes haven't even finished competing in Rio yet, but Beijing's biggest sports buffs are already looking forward to 2022.
Those Winter Olympic Games – which the Chinese capital successfully bid for last year, and celebrated the anniversary of that feat on earlier this month – have already recruited 170 full-time employees for advanced preparation, despite still being eight years off. Han Zirong, the secretary-general of the organising committee, told beijing2022.cn that 60 percent of that staff "is experienced in organising the Beijing 2008 summer Olympics and Beijing's bid for the 2022 winter games."
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Next year, construction is set to begin on fresh sporting venues, while renovations take place on older sports centers. The 2022 organizing committee will handle that preparation from offices in a refashioned "out-of-date steel plant," situated in west Beijing, a move very much in step with the sentiment of the still commencing Rio games, which saw a 30 percent budget cutback.
Han said that frugality "signifies our determination to run the 2022 Olympics in an cost-efficient and sustainable way. We also hope the west of Beijing will develop more rapidly with the arrival of the Beijing 2022 office.”
But as if in rebuke of Rio's ecological controversies, which prompted Vice to declare that the Brazilian city "has broken its promise of an environment-friendly Olympics," Han said insisted that Beijing's ski slope preparation will not leave lasting damage, saying: “We'll work out plans that meet the competition requirements while protecting the environment simultaneously, with the help of the IOC and IFs.”
Despite that conscientious rhetoric, Beijing's next Olympic turn isn't without its flourishes. Several media outlets have recently raved about the "futuristic ‘roller coaster bridge’" that is being designed to connect Beijing and Zhangjiakou so that sports fans and athletes can move between the two locales more easily. Penda, an architecture firm with offices in both Beijing and Vienna, recently unveiled a model of the bridge which prominently showcased its 1,482-foot-long link bearing similarity to a strand of DNA. Those designers also echoed the sentiments of Han, saying it will "require five times less steel than a typical box girder bridge," according to The Daily Mail.
Such seemingly premature excitement for the 2022 games shouldn't come as a surprise, however, given China's lackluster athletic showing at the 2016 summer games – placing them in third, behind Great Britain and America, in total gold medals so far – which prompted one dismayed microblogger to declare: "Rubbish judges!” and “Rubbish Rio!”
An earlier version of this article said the bridge is "being designed to connect Beijing and Zhangjiajie." It in fact should have said Zhangjiakou. We regret the error, and have since corrected it above.
More images of the bridge can be found here.
More stories by this author here.
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Photos: The Daily Mail
