China To Host Winter Sports Championships
Although the Beijing Olympics have now closed and attention switches to the coming World Alpine Ski Championships in Val d’Isere next winter and the 2010 Olympics the season after, China is still to host one more major international contest, and this time its snow sports.
The 24th 2009 World University Games, also known as the ‘Universiade’ will be held in the country’s skiing capital city Harbin, 800km (500 miles) north of Beijing and a former host of the Asian Winter Games.
The ski events will be held at Sun Mountain Yabuli, the country’s original resort in the late 1990s, from which (at last report) 300 new ski centres have developed across the country over the past decade. The resort is now operated by Melco China Resorts Ltd, established for only six months, but already owner of half a dozen major ski areas in the country, making it the Chinese equivalent of Vail.
The company is busy converting these areas in to up-market developments with year round attractions, and has signed up the prestigious Small Luxury Hotels of the World group, which has properties in many of the world’s top resorts, for one of its properties.
At Yabuli MELCO is adding heated gondolas and new hotels at the top and bottom of the slopes as part of a $25m spend. The number of skiers in China is expected to reach 10 million by 2010 from a standing start in 1996.
Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc
