Winter Dreams Flying Secrets revealed | Behind the "explosion" of the Shougang ski jump

On February 15th, the Shougang Ski Jump in Shijingshan District, Beijing, once again boiled! After Gu Ailing, the mainland youngster Su Yiming once again "took a leap into the sky" and won the gold medal. In this new venue with only four Winter Olympic games, Chinese athletes have won the "double gold", making the big jump platform the focus again.

The most beautiful crystal shoes, time and space snow flying, industrial Disney, Olympic weather vane, Beijing new Internet celebrity, new landmarks in Western Beijing... Since this period of time, the Shougang Ski Jump has been given a high evaluation by Chinese and foreign media and international officials and athletes, and has gained one beautiful name after another, which seems to have "exploded" overnight.

△ On February 8, China's Gu Ailing was in the competition. On the same day, the final of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Freestyle Ski Women's Big Jump was held at the Beijing Shougang Ski Jump. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Lan Hongguang

1. The best track

"This is the best track I've ever skated!" Gu Ailing said so after winning the gold.

Indeed, not only Gu Ailing, IOC President Bach, IOC Beijing Competition Association President Samaranch Jr., as well as other athletes and staff also praised the Shougang Ski Jump. After participating in training for the first time, Saka, an athlete from the Czech Republic, lamented that "the track is too well maintained".

For this track, the staff of the big jump platform has opened the "snowmaking project" since December 12, 2021, seven snow guns and four snow cannons "roar" at the same time, through the intelligent snowmaking system, on the one hand, to meet the different requirements of the departure area, landslide, jumping area and landing slope for snow volume and snow quality, on the other hand, to continuously improve snowmaking efficiency and ensure energy conservation and environmental protection.

Unlike other snow venues, the Shougang Ski Jump is the only one located in the urban area, because of the high daytime temperature, late cooling and short cold tide in Beijing, so it can only meet the requirements of snowmaking from late at night to early in the morning. In order to ensure the completion of the snowmaking task on schedule, the 14 artificial snow teams led by Han Dong, the mountain operation manager, and Liu Qi and Wei Wei, monitored the climate and wind direction conditions at all times and started the equipment in time, and carried out field inspections every hour in order to make snowmaking with maximum efficiency. Several overnight work finally completed the snowmaking area of the track of about 4190 square meters, the total amount of snowmaking reached 11500 cubic meters, and the snow storage was 3600 cubic meters, laying a solid foundation for the shaping of the track.

According to the requirements of the International Snow Federation, secondary shaping experts need to accurately shape the position, height, elevation angle, parabola length and angle of the starting platform to build a platform to help athletes "fly". The whole process is quite difficult, the snow car needs to push out the snow out of the general shape, and then use different types of snow rakes, shovels and snow removal shovels for artificial shaping, and then use the red line and the level of these precision instruments to level, the pressure is high and low, and the fine shaping process is completed. After repeated measurement and adjustment, the height of the starting platform is nearly 4 meters, the slope of the starting platform and the landing slope is nearly 40 degrees, and the length of the end area is nearly 30 meters. The design and confirmation of these data, the construction is only the first step, and more importantly, daily maintenance.

"Before the athletes arrive, if no one on the track skates, they will be more or less soft or lumpy due to weather changes. So we push our shaping tools and wear crampons every day, and walk back and forth dozens of times on the track. The secondary shaping expert small race introduced, "Before the race, it is for the track to always maintain the use of the state, and during the race is to smooth the gliding marks, make up the prompt markings, test the soft and hard snow quality, in order to ensure the comfort of the track." ”

At the scene, you can often see people who "adsorb" on the track like Spider-Man, "The 'Spider-Man' you are talking about is us." From 5 o'clock to 20 o'clock, even 21 o'clock, 22 o'clock, constantly testing, back and forth trimming, very hard and very tired, especially this year, the weather is unusually cold, every time I come back, people are frozen. But seeing that the athletes are very satisfied with our track, those hardships are nothing. Xiao Sai added with a smile.

2. Cool "Big Chimney"

Along with Gu Ailing and Su Yiming, there is also a cooling tower painted with the emblem of the Winter Olympics next to the big jump platform. "The four 'big chimneys' next to it fill the big jump with a cool atmosphere, which is exactly the atmosphere needed for the big ski jump." Gu Ailing said in surprise.

Gu Ailing said that the "big chimney" is actually the abandoned cooling tower of the old Shougang, which has a special sense of heaviness in front of the modern big jump platform, and the snow-white track and the colorful emblem form a contrasting glow, which has a "cool chimney" and "as if you are in the network world".

These four hyperbolic 70-meter-high cooling towers, all small natural ventilation freshwater cooling towers, are the supporting equipment of the former Shougang Electric Power Plant, and the main function is to complete the heat exchange between hot water and air, reduce the temperature of circulating water, and provide sufficient cooling water for power generation in power plants. The earliest of them was built in 1978, and the latest was built in 1991, and it ran until the main steel process of shougang's old plant was discontinued. After the suspension of production, the four cooling towers were retained as the characteristic landmarks of the factory area, and the shocking industrial characteristic space was presented, and at the same time, the industriousness and wisdom of generations of Shougang people were erected here.

When the broadcasters and photojournalists pointed their long guns and short cannons at the athletes' empty posture, they suddenly found that they could overlap with the emblem on the cooling tower, so the "big chimney" became the focus of the camera capture and was frozen into a wonderful moment. "Why can they overlap?" "Where is the best place to take these photos?" The most characteristic landscape of the big jump platform once again enters the spotlight.

It is understood that according to the demand for broadcast screens, the cooling tower, as an important background for athletes to take off, will appear in the high-speed camera screen and become an important identification element for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. However, the design and implementation of the painting are very difficult and challenging, the cooling tower is towering, the history is long, and the main body of the eggshell structure is very fragile. In order to ensure the landscape effect, the design team repeatedly tested, reconstructed the cooling tower model, simulated the athlete's jump trajectory, accurately calculated the size and angle of the cooling tower emblem coating, and finally determined that the painted emblem was 16.5 meters high, 13 meters wide, and 46 meters from the ground.

Due to the large size of the cooling tower, the emblem needs to be cut into unit screens during the construction process, the turning point of the emblem needs to be confirmed point by point, and finally the painting is carried out manually. The painting format should be large, the colors should be bright, the graphics should be clear, and the winter construction is extremely difficult, but with the joint efforts of the venue team, the owner Shougang and the subordinate Shijingshan, the painting work took less than a month and was successfully completed on January 2, 2022. The completion of this landscape has led to the creation of out-of-the-loop photographs and the effective integration of Winter Olympic elements with old industrial sites.

3. Those who do not watch the game on the field

The track (hollow staircase) on the side of the track was reserved for snow shaping and maintenance personnel, but during the race, several people wearing red cross orange vests on the side of the starting platform stood there, and medical stretchers were placed next to them.

Standing in that position, you can only see the back of the athlete's jumping moment, and the most wonderful parts of the flip, grab, and land are all invisible. Are athletes doing well? Who's next to be the contestant? What are the scores? They can only be heard through the sound of the scene, the shouts of the audience. "Because there is a risk of athletes being injured in the middle of the track, we have to arrange medical personnel around the starting and jumping platforms, except for the end zone. Only in this way can we realize our commitments. Gao Hui, medical manager of the stadium team, said.

What they have to do on the sidelines is: 2 minutes, transport the patient outside the venue; 4 minutes, after the assessment of the injury is completed, the referral process is started, and the patient is transferred to the designated hospital; 15 minutes, the patient arrives at the designated hospital for treatment...

There is also such a group of people, when everyone is watching the wonderful event, they are doing their own thing in all corners of the stadium. Timekeeper scoreboards, video screens, cable TV, radio frequency management and other workers, who are in the arena but can't enjoy the game, their eyes are always fixed on the equipment in front of them. "If you want to talk about the closest post to the game, it must be responsible for the timing scoreboard. It's just that everyone is watching the game, and we are staring at the score card. How dare you be distracted! Technical manager Zhang Jinyuan quipped.

The broadcast signal is to transmit the wonderful event synchronously in real time, the signal should be stable; the communication network should be high-speed to ensure that the reporter sends out the graphics and videos at the first time; the timing and scoring numbers should be accurate, the links should be tight, the channels should be smooth, and the scores should be counted out at the first time and transmitted back to the field, so that the referees and athletes, coaches, and the audience in front of the scene and the TV have no time difference. "We must use the fastest speed to let the athletes' results come out at the first time, Gu Ailing and Su Yiming win the championship, we are the first to know." Zhang Jinyuan said proudly.

People like this who are in the arena but have no time to enjoy the event abound among the staff of the big jump, and they use silent perseverance to hold up the successful completion of the Shougang big jump event, there is no regret, only pride.

(Yan Durong media reporter Liu Caiping)