Like Beijing, snow is being invented

Between the Winter Olympics last year in South Korea and those of 2026 in Milan and Cortina, in 2022 there will be the edition hosted by China in the outskirts of Beijing, in a cold area of ​​the country where, however, it hardly ever snows and where until about ten years ago the territory was rural, bare and fragmented only by the Great Wall. A little over two years from the event, in those places one of the many great changes in the country is taking place.

It is not the first time that a city with a climate that is not very rigid is chosen to host the Winter Olympics. Sochi, for example, the Russian city that hosted them in 2014, has a winter temperature ranging between two and ten degrees. To ensure sufficient snow to guarantee the normal running of the races, about half a million cubic meters of artificial snow were produced. Some races were still suspended during the Olympics due to the poor condition of the slopes, and chemical additives were often used to prevent the snow from continuing to melt. In the end, those in Sochi were the hottest winter Olympics ever played.

Last year in Pyeongchang the problem was reversed: the Olympics in South Korea were in fact the coldest ever recorded, with many races postponed due to too harsh weather conditions and ice on the slopes. Beijing, on the other hand, about eight hundred kilometers west of Pyeongchang, is located on the plain in one of the most arid areas of China: it is cold but there is no snow. To solve the problem, the Chinese Olympic Committee is completing dozens of tracks built at locations within a radius of 200 kilometers from Beijing. It will also accumulate hundreds of thousands of tons of water to create millions of cubic meters of artificial snow.

As for football, the Winter Olympics will not only be an event that will highlight the country for a few months in a year, but the starting point of an ambitious national plan for the development of winter sports. The authorities are following a plan to bring 300 million people closer to the most popular winter disciplines, and the Olympics are a tool to equip the country with modern facilities that can be easily reached in just over an hour's drive from Beijing and its surroundings, ie from a area inhabited by over 20 million people. The costs to be incurred for a day on the slopes are kept low to attract visitors: some journalists from New York Times that they went there they talk about accesses and equipment rentals of less than twenty dollars.

However, one problem remains: water. Almost all newly built runways have been equipped with large basins for collecting water, then used to create artificial snow. But the areas are dry and according to some recent studies the water reserves of southern China are exploited at a higher rate than that at which they regenerate. The Chinese government, however, claims that in the future the economy of the region north of Beijing will be focused on tourism, and no longer on industry and agriculture, with a consequent water saving.