All venues for this year’s Asian Games in the Chinese city of Hangzhou have been completed and can now begin hosting test events ahead of the multi-sport showpiece in September.
Comprehensive checks have been carried out at the 56 venues that will be used during the Asian Games and the Asian Para Games. Twelve venues have been newly constructed, while 26 have been reconstructed, nine are existing facilities and a further nine have been set up as temporary destinations.
Organisers said the venues have been built with the concept ‘Green, Smart, Economical, Ethical’ in mind to meet the needs of the various sports. Venues are located in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Huzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua and other cities.
The organising committee will now accelerate the work of transferring venues’ operation and maintenance contracts before test events are able to begin. The Asian Games will take place from September 10-25, with the Asian Para Games to follow from October 9-15.
Venues will include the Yellow Dragon Sports Center, which has undergone redevelopment work ahead of the Games. The venue is located 18km from the Asian Games Village and under its new guise it will comprise a 52,000-seat stadium with an athletics track, a 6,000-seat arena and a 2,000-seat aquatics centre.
The stadium will be one of the football venues for the Asian Games, with the arena hosting gymnastics and the swimming/diving centre staging water polo.
The Alibaba Sports division of Chinese technology giant Alibaba in October sealed a 15-year contract to operate and manage Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center (pictured), another of the Games venues.
The contract was rubber-stamped after Alibaba Sports initially won the bid for the project in November 2020, with the complex set to serve as the main element of Hangzhou’s staging of the Asian Games.
Comprising the 80,000-seat ‘Big Lotus’ main stadium and 10,000-seat ‘Small Lotus’ tennis centre as its main attractions, the complex first opened its doors in December 2018.
Image: Charlie fong/CC BY-SA 4.0/Edited for size
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