Industrial splendor of Shougang Big Air venue captures imagination worldwide

It has hosted some of the most breathtaking actions of the Games so far, but even without the athletes, the Shougang Big Air venue is truly a star in its own right.

Launching freeski Big Air champion Gu Ailing to international superstardom this week, the giant slope and its stunning industrial setting have wowed athletes and officials, not to mention going viral on social media around the world.

Built in western Beijing's Shougang Industrial Park, the 64-meter-high structure that features a 164-meter-long ramp was erected in front of three imposing cooling towers, abandoned facilities left from a steel mill which had been relocated out of Beijing before the 2008 Summer Games.

The venue's industrial splendor has captured the imagination of Games participants and fans, with netizens particularly enraptured by the cyberpunk feel of the cooling towers, which some overseas fans have mistaken for nuclear-power facilities.

As the first permanent Big Air ramp in the world, the venue stands as a towering example of Beijing's efforts to stage sustainable Olympic Games, said organizers.

"It's totally an absurd speculation to relate the venue to an abandoned nuclear facility of any kind," Zhao Weidong, a Beijing 2022 organizing committee spokesperson, said during a news briefing on Thursday.

"It was actually built on the former site of the Shougang steel factory, which has been renovated and repurposed into a public park for hosting sports and cultural events as well as conventions," Zhao added.

"It's an example of sustainability and an impressive practice of using the Olympic Games' impact for urban development."

After hosting the Olympic debut of freestyle skiing Big Air, won by Gu and Norway's Birk Ruud on the men's side, the Shougang slope will continue staging the discipline's snowboarding events from Feb 14-15, when local favorite and slopestyle runner-up Su Yiming goes for his second medal at Beijing 2022.

Big Air sees athletes launch themselves off the ramp to perform gravity-defying tricks and twists in the air. As a trendy extreme sport with a youthful and fashionable fan base, the discipline's snowboarding event made its debut at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games before the freeski equivalent took place for the first time in Beijing.

With most Big Air athletes accustomed to being surrounded by desolate mountains far from cities, Shougang Big Air's urban setting has given the event the wow factor in Beijing.

"It's a perfect, bigger venue. It's so well-built and the first permanent Big Air venue ever," Swedish freeskier Henrik Harlaut said after winning bronze in the men's final on Wednesday.

"We've done a lot of city Big Air where it's on scaffolding towers, where it's always kind of sketchy with a narrow in-run and short landing area. So to be here where it's a super wide in-run and there's even space on the side of the jump so you can ride out without being scared of it... it's definitely very nice for us."

Teenage British skier Kirsty Muir was also left in awe of Shougang.

"The venue is amazing. The Big Air jump rides so well and it is such a cool place to have the jump in. I really love it," said the 17-year-old, who finished fifth in the final.

Now as a permanent feature at the park, Shougang Big Air is expected to bid for more World Cup-level events after Beijing 2022, and also looks set to become a major tourist attraction in the west of the capital.