How did the Shougang Ski Big Jump, where Gu Ailing won the championship, play the "Game of Ice and Fire"?

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Written by reporter Zhao Tianyu Edited by Chen Yongjie

Scientific review:

Hu Bin (Professor at the Winter Olympics Training Institute of Beijing Sport University)

On the morning of February 8, in the women's freestyle skiing big air finals of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the 19-year-old Chinese teenager Gu Ailing won the gold medal in this event with 188.25 points after three rounds of competition. This is also the first freestyle skiing big air gold medal in the history of the Winter Olympics. At 10:12, Gu Ailing appeared on the stage and opened the firepower to the maximum in the first round, directly scoring 93.75 points. In the second round, Gu Ailing landed smoothly, 88.50 points, temporarily ranked third. In the last jump, Gu Ailing withstood the pressure and performed a super difficult move, challenging her own limits, and scored 94.50 points.

(Photo source: Xinhua News Agency)

The Shougang Ski Jump was once a steel mill with sparks flying and molten steel flowing, but now it has become a winter sports center with ice making, refrigeration and stunning fashion. The once silent "Ten-mile Steel City" has transformed into a vibrant sports "Shougang Park". Through the long picture, let's see how "A Song of Ice and Fire" is sung here.

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Shougang Ski Jump: Industrial heritage meets modern civilization

The Shougang Ski Jump, located in the northern area of ​​the Shougang Old Industrial Park, is the only snow competition venue in the Beijing competition area. Climbing the big jump, you can see Qunming Lake, the third and fourth blast furnaces, the silo, the oxygen production plant, and a large area of ​​the Shougang Old Industrial Park. This was once the Shougang factory area with roaring machines, but now it will become a competition place for Winter Olympic athletes to pursue "faster, higher, stronger". This is also the first time in the history of the Winter Olympics that a perfect combination of competition venues, industrial heritage reuse, and urban renewal has been achieved.

▲The Shougang Ski Jump, located in the northern area of ​​the Shougang Old Industrial Park (Photo source: Xinhua News Agency)

As the venue for snowboarding and freestyle skiing in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, four gold medals will be awarded here. Taking into account the wind direction, the large air jump is arranged in a northwest-southeast direction. The main structure is 160 meters long, 30 meters wide at its maximum, and 60.05 meters high. Four 70-meter-high cooling towers serve as the auxiliary background of the air jump, with Shijingshan and Yongding River as the environmental background. Waterfront spectator seats are set up around the large air jump, and the adjacent Qunming Lake can provide about 20 hectares of natural ice in winter.

▲Shougang Ski Jump and surrounding environment (Photo source: Xinhua News Agency)

From a distance, the large ski jump looks like the flying ribbons in the Dunhuang murals, hence the name "Feitian". It is also named "Crystal Shoes" because it looks like the dancing shoes of a princess in a fairy tale. When you get closer, the large ski jump is naturally connected to the adjacent Shougang cooling tower, with a perfect transition to the skyline. The outline of the inclined elevator is roughly symmetrically distributed at a small angle with the arc of the cooling tower, without any sense of disobedience.

It is understood that in order to make the big ski jump look "more beautiful and more meaningful", the direction and angle of the big ski jump body not only meet the functional requirements of the project itself, but also the design team specially invited old Shougang employees who have worked here for many years to observe the design sketches at the beginning of the design, so as to select the best aesthetic angle.

"Frugal Games" and "Green Olympics" are two of the concepts implemented by the Beijing Winter Olympics. In the past, most of the snowboard jumping venues were temporarily built with scaffolding and were dismantled after the competition. The freestyle skiing aerials track is often built on the mountain, using the mountain terrain to form the required slope difference of the track.

But in fact, the requirements of the two sports competition venues are very similar, especially in the two links of sliding and landing, which are almost the same. If the slope curve can be changed reasonably, it will be possible to use the same track for different competitions, which can not only save resources but also improve the quality of viewing, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

The design team conducted in-depth research based on this demand. They used more than 1,000 modules to change the track surface in a similar way to "building blocks". This variable track section is located in the ramp area of ​​the Shougang Big Jump, thus realizing the rapid switching between the snowboard big jump and the freestyle skiing aerials track.

According to the current conversion requirements, the total cost of completing the construction is about 2 million yuan. The number of nodes and modules that need to be replaced each time is about 5% of the cost, no more than 200,000 yuan, which is far lower than the investment of more than 10 million yuan for building a new track.

▲December 15, 2021, Beijing, the Shougang Ski Jump Center under preparation (Photo source: Visual China)

The ski jump is also unique in terms of materials and construction plans: the application of materials needs to be light and transparent, and try to alleviate the sense of oppression brought by the huge volume of the ski jump, while meeting the windproof requirements of the competition. The selection of materials must also take into account the construction process and time cost. In the end, perforated aluminum plates are used, which are easy to install and can achieve a high degree of completion. The perforation rate can also meet the windproof requirements after wind tunnel tests.

It is worth mentioning that the Shougang Ski Big Jump is also the world's first permanently preserved and used ski big jump.

It is understood that after the Winter Olympics, the big air platform venue can also host big air platform competitions at home and abroad, and become a training ground for professional athletes and sports teams, a base for selecting young reserve talents, and a training base for event management personnel. The track was built with a water outlet reserved, and after the renovation, it can also be used for water skiing and grass skiing. The sports plaza and audience area under the big air platform are specially equipped with an atmosphere lighting system, which will bring audiences a completely different viewing experience from traditional events in the future, and can also host large-scale events such as concerts.

(This content is jointly produced by Beijing Science and Technology News and China Digital Science and Technology Museum)

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