According to China News on February 10, Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee spokesman Zhao Weidong said that the Shougang Ski Jump is in the industrial park of Shougang, which is the first competition venue in the history of the Winter Olympics to be directly combined with the reuse of industrial heritage, “It was upgraded using industrial resources such as the cooling tower of Shougang Steel Company, and is the world’s first permanently preserved and used ski jumps.”
The report said, “In the past, the big jumps of the Winter Olympics would be dismantled after the competition, but this big jump will stay permanently.” Zhao Weidong said that the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee’s office is located in the Shougang Park, which is very close to the Shougang Ski Jump, “My colleagues and I have been working here every day for several years. He called it a stunning example of urban planning and urbanism.”
However, Zhao Weidong also said that in the past two days he also noticed that some Western media “reported the story of our transformation of the Shougang Park from an industrial park into a cultural and sports and leisure park, and gave it full recognition.”
On Feb. 8, Eileen Gu, a member of the Chinese delegation, won the first gold medal in the event in the history of the Winter Olympics for the Chinese team at the finals of the freestyle ski jumping event at the Beijing Winter Olympics. On the same day, Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape Communications, posted a photo of the big jump on his social media platform with the following quote: “This photo makes me angry. We should also build nuclear reactors next to ski resorts.”
In response, many users in the comment section educated him online about his “ignorance”. Andersen later posted several more spoof photos, seemingly to defuse the embarrassment.
According to the land media People’s Daily, the huge building next to the Shougang ski jump at the Beijing Winter Olympics is the former site of the cooling tower of the former Shougang power plant, which is not used for nuclear power.
The newly built Shougang Ski Jump is located in the northern part of Shougang Old Industrial Park, the only snow competition venue among the six Winter Olympic venues in the Beijing area.
Capital Steel Group, which was built in 1919, ceased production in Beijing in 2010 for the main steel industry to reduce pollution and moved to Caofeidian, a small island in Bohai Bay; in 2016, the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee was stationed in the Shougang Park.
The Shougang Ski Jump consists of three parts: the track, the referee tower and the grandstand area, with the track 164 meters long, 34 meters at its widest point and 60 meters at its highest point. The site is distributed from north to south with the main plant of the former Shougang Power Plant, the cooling tower and the plant of the former Shougang Oxygen Plant. Source