July 7 (sports.sohu.com) On July 7, 2014, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will announce candidate cities for the 2022 Winter Olympics. If successful, Beijing will enter into the preparatory phase for the event as a candidate. Zhao Yinggang, formal director of the Chinese Winter Sport Federation of the General Administration of Sport of China, stated that Beijing’s bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics would promote the development of Chinese winter sports and the growth of sports in China.

On November 3 last year, the Chinese Olympic Committee officially corresponded to the IOC to nominate Beijing to bid for the 2022 Games. According to the bidding program, Beijing and Zhangjiakou in Hebei Province will jointly bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics. In April, 2014, Zhao Yinggang was transferred to the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games Bid Committee. He said: “I will pay more attention to the work in the committee.”

As a practitioner in winter sports, Zhao Yinggang expressed his pleasure to help bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics. “I hope that Chinese winter sports will grow fast, which is what I have been striving for. I expect to contribute more to the bid,” he said, adding that the bid would drive the progress of winter sports, competitive sports and mass sports in China.

He said: “The bid will provide a good platform to push the winter sports forward during the process. If successful, it will bring about a golden opportunity for Chinese winter sports.” He introduced that Chinese winter sports has grown rapidly and attracted more attention for recent years in the wake of economic and social development, especially after the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. However, he said: “To some extent, ice and snow sports are not traditional in China. The bid will be a good chance to boost the development of these sports, including improving some basic sporting events.”

The quadrennial Winter Olympic Games are the top-level sports and certainly exert unexceptional influence on Chinese winter sports. “The bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics will further give an impetus to the development of the mass winter sports, attract more attention and participation. I believe the Chinese winter sports will make progresses, which will help the country to grow into a sports power. The development of Chinese winter sports also needs the support of competitive and mass sports; in return,the bid will drive their advancement.”

Zhao Yinggang introduced that the Chinese winter sports used to be conducted mainly in three Northeastern provinces including Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. For recent years, the ice and snow sports have been popularized in South and West China, especially in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the northwest region, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. In addition, these sports have also gained momentum in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region in North China. Teenagers’ ice hockey teams have emerged like mushrooms after rain in Beijing and amounted to over one hundred, highlighting the ice and snow sports in China. Ski events have been increasingly welcomed in Hebei Province’s Zhangjiakou, attracting more people at extensive ages to participate in and more ski resorts to be built.

Zhao Yinggang agreed with the significance of the joint bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics in the wake of rapid development of winter sports. He said, “I believe that Beijing’s bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics will promote the development of ice and snow events in China, not only in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, North China, but West and South China. Furthermore, the bid will make contributions to the Olympic Movement. In a word, the bid will mean a lot to both the ice and snow circles as well as the sporting world in China.”