Qitaihe city in NE China won the “City of Olympic Champions”

The awarding ceremony of the “City of Olympic Champions” awarded by the Chinese Olympic Committee to Qitaihe City, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province was held in Qitaihe on November 11.

Qitaihe City has cultivated more than 10 Winter Olympic champions and world champions, including Yang Yang, Wang Meng, Sun Linlin, Fan Kexin, etc. Athletes from Qitaihe won 7 gold medals in the Winter Olympics, 177 gold medals in world-level competitions, and 535 gold medals in national-level competitions.

Qitaihe is now the “National Key High-level Sports Reserve Talent Base” and the “National Short Track Speed Skating Qitaihe Sports Training Base”, known as the “Hometown of Winter Olympic Champions”, and a large number of athletes with Olympic dreams come to learn, according to the Publicity Department of the CPC Qitaihe Municipal Committee.

At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Fan Kexin and her teammates stormed to a thrilling victory in the debut event and claimed the first gold for China, achieving a historic breakthrough.

The city has been stepping up efforts to train winter sports talents in recent years by building schools that provide short track speed skating training, setting up training base for provincial sports team, as well as holding ice and snow sports events.

According to statistics, Qitaihe City currently has 20 short-track speed skating teams, more than 600 athletes in training, and 16 coaches. In six major sports such as speed skating, ski jumping, and snowboarding, more than 300 outstanding athletes have been sent to the country and the province. It is the city with the most abundant reserve talents for short track speed skating in the country.

Source: Publicity Department of the CPC Qitaihe Municipal Committee