China to Open 1km Indoor Ski Slope
China to Open 1km Indoor Ski Slope
Published : 25-May-2010 11:43
China Announce Plans To Open World's First 1km Long Indoor SlopeChina will open the world's longest indoor ski slope yet , when the first kilometre (3,300ft) long indoor slope will open in the city of Guangzhou near Hong Kong.
Guangzhou will feature a slope of 1000m in length and has 100 million people living within a radius of 100km.
The new indoor snow slope will probably be the country's seventh, and the fourth to be named after Olympic ice skater Ye Qiaobo, who won medals in speed skating at the 1992 and 1994 Olympic Winter Games and has subsequently developed a love of skiing, in common with millions of other Chinese people.
The new indoor slope will be nearly twice as long as the current longest indoor slope at Amneville in France, which is reported to have been extended to 600m, overtaking the previous longest in Germany and The Netherlands.
Prior to Guangzhou however, Chengde has announced her third indoor slope will open in Nanjing next year, with a 500m long slope. The city, which was the country's capital prior to 1949, has a population approaching 8 million.
With six indoor centres China will match the UK for the number of indoor centres, equal third behind The Netherlands with 8 and Japan where nine small elderly indoor snow centres built in the 1990s are still believed to be operational. However the large size of the new slope coupled with other large indoor centres in China means that the country will have more square feet of indoor snow slopes than any other.
Qiaobo opened her second indoor slope after the initial centre in Beijing in Hangzhou last October. After Nanjing and Guangzhou she has also announced her fifth centre will be built at Chengdu, in the centre of China. It has a population of 10 million and is close to the world's biggest city, Chongqing, which has a population of 33 million.
Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc
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