Shandong shaping up as future sporting powerhouse

A villagers' football league is held on May 7 in Licheng district, Jinan, capital of Shandong province. [Photo/IC]

Shandong has been working to launch extensive public fitness initiatives, improve the level of physical education for local young people, promote the all-round development of recreational and competitive sports, and move faster to build itself into a province strong in sports, local officials said at a recent news conference.

In terms of competitive sports, athletes from Shandong won seven gold medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, ranking first among Chinese provinces for the first time. In the 14th National Games in 2021, Shandong athletes won 58 gold medals and 160 medals, again ranking it first in the country. During the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, five athletes from the province were selected for the Chinese delegation with one winning a silver medal, achieving an historic breakthrough.

The girls' football team from Shandong's Licheng No 2 Middle School won the 27th World School Football Championship, which concluded in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, on July 29, after defeating the girls' football team from No 1 High School of Baoding from Hebei province.

The province has been promoting sports and exercise among local people. Measures have been taken to further improve the public service system for sports and exercise. The overriding goal is to make it more convenient for people to participate in physical activities, and ignite the public's enthusiasm for sports.

A network of public sports facilities at the city, county and village levels has been established in Shandong, and all its 16 municipalities have built national fitness centers.

The province has implemented a special action plan to build football fields and sports parks, and now it has a total of 8,189 of the former, 129 large sports parks, and 99 ice and snow venues.

By the end of last year, the province had 245,700 sports venues, ranking fifth in the country. The total area of its sports venues reached 295 million square meters, ranking third in China, while the per capita area stood at 2.9 square meters, placing it fourth in the country.

The latest data show that the total scale of sports consumption in the province hit 213.18 billion yuan ($29.55 billion), while that of the sports industry hit 371.27 billion yuan.