Shanxi NTOs to serve at Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

Fourteen people from North China's Shanxi province have been chosen as national technical officials (NTOs) to serve at the upcoming Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games – to be held in and around the national capital on Feb 4-20.

NTOs are the general name referring to technical representatives, competition officials, referees and metering officials.

The 14 NTOs from Shanxi will serve in the alpine skiing, snowboarding and freestyle skiing events, ski jumping and Nordic combined events, cross-country skiing and biathlon events – as well as in the Paralympic alpine skiing and biathlon events.

All of them have been on duty in their respective positions since Jan 21, making final preparations for the games.

Hao Liang, an associate professor at the Physical Education Department of Jinzhong University – located in the Yuci district of Jinzhong city in Shanxi – is one of the NTOs for the ski jumping and Nordic combined events to be held in the city of Zhangjiakou in North China's Hebei province, one of the competition zones for Beijing 2022. Hao will work in the competition office, which releases all information about the sports program.

"It took training lasting three years before I was selected to be an NTO and I advanced my skills and studies during the period," Hao said.

Over the past three years, he obtained a national referee grade certificate for ski jumping and the Nordic combined events. Last November, he passed the NTO test for the FIS ski jumping and Nordic combined Continental Cup competitions.

"Through further study and training, I learned about the development, technical specifications, competition rules, competition organization and management of ice and snow sports events," Hao said.

Participating in the NTO work has inspired him to develop more ideas for the future.

"I want to contribute to the ice and snow sports development in Shanxi, pass on the legacy of the Winter Olympics to the youth in the province through the introduction of more winter sports to schools," he added.

This calls, he said, for more practices during the post-Beijing 2022 period and the winter sports sector is expected to expand in scale over the next three to five years of development.