Countdown to Beijing 2022 | Professional teams play vital role in lead-up to Beijing 2022

BEIJING, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- Professional personnel have provided the cornerstone of the preparation for the Beijing Olympic Winter Games over the past years as the Chinese capital is ready to deliver a fantastic, extraordinary and excellent successful Games.

While China has considerable experience and expertise in infrastructure construction, the country had little prior knowledge of organizing major winter sport events before winning the Winter Olympics bid in 2015.

To combat this lack of experience, China has brought overseas experts on board in preparation for the Winter Olympics, just as it did for the 2008 Summer Games.

"We have adopted a global view in the preparing process," said Yan Cheng, head of human resources of Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (BOCOG).

"A total of 61 foreign experts from 18 countries have been hired and their expertise worked well in many key areas of the preparatory work for the Winter Olympics, such as venue construction, course design and event operations," Yan said.

Not only helping shape up the Games, these experts will also leave a legacy for future by grooming a lot of professional personnel in winter sports development, venue design and sports tourism in China, Yan noted.

Besides the foreign experts, Yan said BOCOG has also been focusing on cultivating domestic professional personnel, adding that "we must rely on ourselves."

Over the past five years, the BOCOG has coordinated and implemented more than 400 training programs, covering over 40,000 people.

"The preparations for Beijing 2022 need a large number of professional talents, so we conducted a series of systematic training programs to cultivate our own talents, ranging from universal knowledge, professional knowledge to venue and post knowledge," Yan said.

"Thousands of domestic officials have received trainings, including salaried staff, technical officials, professional technical personnel, volunteers, contractors and so on," he noted.

Close ties have also been fostered between BOCOG and the organizing committees of PyeongChang 2018 and Tokyo 2020, with cooperation focused on personnel training.

Yan said Beijing 2022 has sent hundreds of staff members to PyeongChang 2018 and Tokyo 2020 in secondment programs to get first-hand experience, working in key roles in the local organizing committee or joining in an observational capacity.

With the Beijing Winter Olympics approaching, Yan said the global COVID-19 pandemic must be considered as a major threat to the smooth operation of the Games.

Th BOCOG, together with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), has recently published the second edition of the Beijing 2022 Playbook that outlines COVID-19 countermeasures for the Games.

Yan said it's extremely important for each and every member of the BOCOG staff to understand the rules of the Playbook in order to secure a safe Games.

"We will hold more training sessions on the Playbook and implement all the rules of the Playbook into the memory of everybody. I hope that all of us could be advocates, role models and supervisors of these COVID-19 countermeasures," Yan said.

The Olympic Winter Games will take place between February 4-20, 2022, and the Paralympic Winter Games will be held from March 4-13.