Beijing - 1st Olympics 100% man made snow

[Smellytele]

Anyone see where they built the freestyle “ramp”?
Right next to a nuclear power station. Beautiful! Even have an Olympic banner on one of the cooling towers.

 

[drjeff]

Anyone see where they built the freestyle “ramp”?
Right next to a nuclear power station. Beautiful! Even have an Olympic banner on one of the cooling towers.

Apparently those cooling towers are not from a nuclear reactor, but from a now closed steel mill.

Quite the interesting visual backdrop reagardless of what the cooling towers were used for

 

[jimmywilson69]

looks like a video game. the whole skiing and boarding setup is super weird...

Also the manmade snow thing is super silly. every race is on manmade snow. Killington held a world cup race on 100% manmade snow. there wasn't any hooplaw about that except for how awesome their snowmaking crew was. Which was certainly deserved!

 

[fbrissette]

Anyone see where they built the freestyle “ramp”?
Right next to a nuclear power station. Beautiful! Even have an Olympic banner on one of the cooling towers.

Cooling towers are also used in many coal and gas thermal plants, so they may not be nuclear. They look grim nonetheless.

 

[NYDB]

It was built on a former steel mill site. Kind of a post industrial reclamation thing. Doesn't make it any prettier.

 

[gladerider]

the olympics is not what it used to be for sure
sarajevo, sochi, pyongchang and beijing should not have hosted

 

[Smellytele]

the olympics is not what it used to be for sure
sarajevo, sochi, pyongchang and beijing should not have hosted

No one wants to host too expensive and Olympic committee poses too many demands on the host city/ nation.

 

[deadheadskier]

They really should just establish a handful of winter and summer locations and just rotate through them. It's a colossal waste of money to be building these venues only to tear them back down after the games.

For winter - Salt Lake City, Vancouver, Scandanavia, mainland Europe and Japan

Summer maybe have a few additional locations as weather isn't as big of an issue.

 

[IceEidolon]

I agree with having a couple rotating locations - buy once, cry once - but with three locations for the Winter Games it's not even once a decade you'd get to host. Upkeep on Olympic infrastructure might still be too expensive to be anywhere but regions with money to burn.

 

[machski]

They really should just establish a handful of winter and summer locations and just rotate through them. It's a colossal waste of money to be building these venues only to tear them back down after the games.

For winter - Salt Lake City, Vancouver, Scandanavia, mainland Europe and Japan

Summer maybe have a few additional locations as weather isn't as big of an issue.

Unfortunately Salt Lake currently has no viable DH course.

 

[deadheadskier]

Unfortunately Salt Lake currently has no viable DH course.

What happened to the Snow basin course?

 

[1dog]

I agree with having a couple rotating locations - buy once, cry once - but with three locations for the Winter Games it's not even once a decade you'd get to host. Upkeep on Olympic infrastructure might still be too expensive to be anywhere but regions with money to burn.

pretty sure Montreal paid off the '76 Olympic fiasco in 2014 . . . .

The 40-year hangover: how the 1976 Olympics nearly broke Montreal

The Montreal Olympics left the city with a C$1.6bn debt, a string of corruption scandals, and a creeping sense of economic and social decline. Forty years on, how did the city survive?

www.theguardian.com

 

[FBGM]

Unfortunately Salt Lake currently has no viable DH course.

Snowbasin had it for last games there and still has it to my knowledge.

Minimal money/work could be done for another venue somewhere if needed (minimal money Olympic dollars)


Also this DH course is fucking weird.

 

[KustyTheKlown]

It was built on a former steel mill site. Kind of a post industrial reclamation thing. Doesn't make it any prettier.

i am probably in the minority but i think that looks fucking awesome. dystopian, brutalist, futuristic while also retro, somehow overtaken by nature, with an old fashioned chinese pagoda thing on a hilltop. love.

 

[machski]

Snowbasin had it for last games there and still has it to my knowledge.

Minimal money/work could be done for another venue somewhere if needed (minimal money Olympic dollars)


Also this DH course is fucking weird.

Yes, the course is still there but it is too short vertically for an Olympic Men's DH. SLC has to get a waiver to use that course when they held the fees and since then the IOC changes the requirements disallowing that waiver. So, where to put the DH in SLC, I'm sure the reason they didn't put it at the Bird no longer exists (traffic congestion and added vehicle pollution up LCC).

 

[FBGM]

Yes, the course is still there but it is too short vertically for an Olympic Men's DH. SLC has to get a waiver to use that course when they held the fees and since then the IOC changes the requirements disallowing that waiver. So, where to put the DH in SLC, I'm sure the reason they didn't put it at the Bird no longer exists (traffic congestion and added vehicle pollution up LCC).

Interesting.

Did I hear the DH course now in China is like shortest/smallest or something?

Also fuck IOC

 

[JimG.]

Dystopian and ugly.

So perfect.

 

[FBGM]

It was built on a former steel mill site. Kind of a post industrial reclamation thing. Doesn't make it any prettier.

 

[thetrailboss]

Unfortunately Salt Lake currently has no viable DH course.

Why do you say that? I’m pretty sure all the infrastructure remains. Did standards change?

 

[thetrailboss]

It was built on a former steel mill site. Kind of a post industrial reclamation thing. Doesn't make it any prettier.

You beat me to it. I’m watching the Big Air and am like, “WTF?!”

Beijing’s big air jumps at the 2022 Winter Olympics look like a dystopian hellscape

The big air ramps inside a former Beijing steel mill have created a surreal backdrop at the Winter Olympics.

www.sbnation.com