Running cool

Growing popularity of winter sports rides on country's recent Olympic achievements, Zheng Jinran and Sun Xiaochen reports.

Every Saturday afternoon at the indoor skating rink of Joy City, a shopping mall in east Beijing, a slice of the US National Hockey League plays out.

With blades cutting through the hard ice, shoulder pads colliding and audiences cheering, more than 20 youngsters practice the game in professional gear on the standard 1,800-square-meter surface for every 90-minute session.

Yi Shaohan, one of the junior enthusiasts, has been addicted to the sport since the beginning of 2012. His mother Zhou Qin has to book two extra training sessions a week to feed the 9-year-old's growing hockey passion.

"He fell in love with hockey just after taking his first class at 7," Zhou said. "Since then, he spends almost all of his time outside of school on it."

Skating on frozen ponds or lakes for fun has long been a tradition for people living in North China, but not until recently have modern winter sports, like figure skating and ice hockey, emerged as fashionable winter recreation appealing to urban youth like Yi, thanks to China's impressive performance at the recent Winter Olympics.

At the Sochi Winter Olympics in February, China sent athletes to compete in five snow sports: the biathlon, alpine and cross-country skiing, freestyle skiing and snowboarding. It clinched three gold, four silver and two bronze medals, its second-best haul in history.

To further push the popularity of winter sports, Beijing and nearby city Zhangjiakou in Hebei province launched a joint bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in November 2013.

Business at commercial skating clubs has also been bustling.

Since the beginning of this year, the Capital Gymnasium Rink managed by Century Star has been operating at maximum capacity from 1 pm to 8 pm almost every workday, something that previously occurred only during weekends, said Huang Feng, chief coach of Century Star.

"Market demand is growing and we have to stop serving random customers during weekends because the rink is usually fully booked by those who signed up for training courses," said Huang.

Another commercial rink in a north Beijing suburb operated by Century Star, China's first commercial ice sport club that operates 13 rinks across the country, served almost 180,000 customers last year, a 25 percent year-on-year increase from 2012, according to Fan Jun, the club's chairman who is also a former national champion skater.

Once an expensive sport with high rental and equipment costs, skating has become affordable with a growing number of public rinks on offer.

Equipment including skates, helmets and kneepads can be rented at rinks at increasingly affordable prices. The cost of a 30-minute one-on-one training class varies from 100 yuan ($16) to 300 yuan depending on the level of the coaching, Huang said.

Skiing and skating have also become a major form of winter entertainment for residents and tourists.

The 90-day skiing season at the National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, attracted more than 1 million visitors in 2013, making it an important source of operating revenue, said Xiang Jun, deputy general manager of the stadium.

But some experienced skiers have voiced their concern over the huge crowds. Skier Zhang He suggested expanding facilities and controlling the number of visitors.

"It's hard to ski freely with the crowds," said the 32-year-old Beijing resident, who runs a website and mobile application for skiing.

He recommended some of the larger and newer ski resorts at Zhangjiakou's Chongli area, about 220 km northwest of Beijing.

"A large part of our skiers are from Beijing because of the proximity," said Yu Donglin, manager of major ski resort Wanlong.

The resort has taken many measures to expand its trails and improve its facilities, since there will be more visitors in the coming snow season, Yu said.

A new high-speed rail link is also set to be up by the end of 2017, shortening the trip from Beijing to Zhangjiakou to an hour.