All Beijing Winter Olympic venues to be ready by 2019

All of the venues for the Beijing Winter Olympics will completed by the end of 2019, and will be ready for test events in 2020, said an official from the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games on Monday.

All 26 venues for Beijing 2022 are under construction in the three competition zones, namely Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou, said Liu Yumin, standing vice-minister with the Planning, Construction and Sustainability Department of the Organizing Committee of Beijing 2022.

"Most of the 13 venues in Beijing are former Beijing 2008 Olympic venues that are now being repurposed," Liu said.

For instance, the National Aquatic Center, which staged the swimming events during the Beijing 2008 Games, will be transformed into an ice rink for curling in 2022.

Through a strong focus on sustainability, newly-built competition venues for Beijing 2022 will be open to the public, Liu said.

As the most important image of the Games, the emblems of the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, respectively named "Winter Dream" and "Flying High," were unveiled on Dec 15. The Olympic mascot will be released in early 2019.