Snow cannons in Beijing-2022 causing concern

A winter Olympic Games in one of the driest regions of China: in the absence of snow, the Beijing Games (February 4 to 20) will depend entirely on artificial snow.

The mountains northwest of the Chinese capital, where the tests will take place, are in a desperately dark natural state and the man-made ski slopes in preparation are lined with vast white lines, giving them a striped appearance.

With just over a month after the opening of the Games, yellow cannons permanently launch their flakes to prepare the ground for skiers at Yanqing resort.

Cost for water resources: about 185 million liters for all Olympic sites, according to an official estimate released in 2019.

Such consumption in an area structurally hit by droughts is a source of criticism.

"Organizing an Olympic Games in this region is an aberration, it is irresponsible", denounces the geographer Carmen de Jong, from the University of Strasbourg.

"We could also do the Olympic Games on the Moon or on Mars", ironizes.

The organizers assert that the cannons are powered by electricity from renewable sources and that the water will return to the ground when the snow melts.

The Beijing Games will be the first to rely entirely on artificial snow, although already in the previous 2018 edition in South Korea they had to resort to approximately 90% artificial snow.

In total, the planned facilities in Yanqing and the other Zhangjiaku Olympic site employ 300 snow cannons, from Italian brand TechnoAlpin, before snow rollers shape the slopes.

"For us, the biggest challenge is maintaining a uniform snow quality"explains Li Xin, one of the managers of the Yanqing station, about 80 km from the capital.

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Variations in the snow production process "they can make it too hard in certain sections and too soft in others, which could be dangerous for athletes in competition", Add.

With global warming, "regardless of the site of the Olympics, there will always be snow cannons"predicts Florian Hajzeri, TechnoAlpin’s CEO for China.

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