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Winter sports in China cannot inspire the masses. However, a major event like the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing often acts as a catalyst when it comes to sparking enthusiasm for a sport among the population. Swiss Yann Bouduban, who has set up a ski school for children and young people in China, knows what influence the 2022 Olympic Games will have had on alpine skiing in China.

The founder of the sports service company ‘Helveski’ is supported by his Chinese business partner, whom he met on the snowy slopes of the Swiss mountains. The Valais resident has been supporting a handful of young Chinese ski talents since 2018. «I have been traveling with the same skiers for four or five years. They are between 13 and 14 years old, some of them are at the level of good skiers here in Switzerland,” he explains right at the beginning.

Yann Bouduban lives in Chongli, Hebei Province. There he was introduced to another culture and met people who wanted to stand out from the crowd at all costs. Bouduban emphasizes that the idea of ​​competition is present at all levels in Chinese society. According to the Valais, the parents put a lot of pressure on the children and make resources available to the offspring. They want “the child to stand out from the crowd, so he can say, ‘My child is strong and successful.’”

Skiing is still in its infancy in China

While skiing was for a long time the preserve of wealthy families, now people from the wealthy middle class also express their ambitions on the (artificial) snow-covered slopes: skiing is booming. “Currently it is high-ranking officials, university professors and people from the financial sector who are skiing,” Bouduban explains.

Skiing is also linked to the hope of social progress. This hope is a powerful motivation for children (and parents). Above all, skiing in China is still in its infancy and there is still a lot to do. “As it is a new sport in China, rapid progress is expected. We look at what is happening abroad, Europe serves as a benchmark,” explains the founder of Helveski.

The Chinese are working hard to conquer the world of skiing. “Sometimes they ask me how much slope you should have in a turn,” says the Valais resident, before telling us an anecdote about a skier in his forties who burst into his office with a photo of Mikaela Shiffrin in his hand. “He wondered how long it would take him to reach their level. The catch was that the man had never had skis on his feet.”

Parents with blinders on

Bouduban tries to make it clear to his young students that the road to becoming a good skier is long. He talks about parents ‘wearing blinders’.

Bouduban emphasizes that it is a major challenge to make parents understand that alpine skiing is a continuation of normal skiing and not a completely standalone discipline.

Establishing a solid foundation on which progress can be made is actually self-evident. But first he had to make it clear to the Chinese ski students, or rather their parents, that you must master the basics of skiing before venturing into the pole forest or participating in competitions. This is not always easy and is not always well received.

De Romand even admits that several students dropped out because they did not train alone between the bars. The methods are different and skiing in China is different from skiing in Switzerland. “Other local teams have more radical training methods – the kids get caught in the pole forest because they never learned the basic techniques outdoors,” Helveski’s boss explains.

While competitive skiing is slowly developing in the Middle Kingdom, skiing in general is experiencing a boom. “It used to be seen as just an attraction, something you tried for fun.”

Skiing abroad

To promote the sport, Chinese ski resorts have established a well-organized system that allows visitors to equip themselves on site. This possibility has led to a new trend: more and more people regularly visit the slopes and become infected with the “ski virus”.

What’s even more amazing is that this rapid development is creating a Chinese customer base that is enthusiastic about traveling abroad. A growing number of skiers from the giant Asian country are now traveling to ski resorts in the West to discover new Eldorados. For example, Verbier has entered into a partnership with a Chinese ski resort. The Téléverbier company confirms to us that “the partnership still exists, but with very little response”.

Skiing is on the rise

Socializing can be difficult, but the winter sports boom has arrived in China. For Yann Bouduban, this is a stroke of luck, despite the cultural differences: “The project appealed to me; I wanted to try myself in a new environment. “I brought with me a culture that I wanted to bring into another culture,” says the 31-year-old former competitive skier, describing his motivation.

Even though the 300 million skiers requested by Xi Jinping have not yet been reached, more and more people are skiing the slopes. “An independent study shows that 15 million people ski in China. Whether the sport will actually catch on will only become clear next year. Covid has significantly slowed the spread of winter sports.

Beijing is doing everything it can to attract as many future skiers and snowboarders to its ski areas. To achieve this, a lot is invested. For example, to stimulate growth, a high-speed train has been built: “With this train you can reach a ski area within an hour. Customers arrive in the Chongli area, which is also home to the popular Foulong station. Then buses take people to Secret Garden, Thaiwoo and Wanlong.

The increase is less significant in the ski area where the Olympic competitions took place: “Yanqing is less popular because it is so remote.”

It remains to be seen whether alpine skiing has found many fans in one of the world’s most populous countries and whether the 2022 Olympics will spawn a new generation of hopefuls.