Ready for a golden moment

All the competition venues for the Games — five for ice sports in downtown Harbin and another eight for snow events in Yabuli, a ski resort cluster about 200km from Harbin — are existing facilities, and all the refurbishment and equipment upgrades needed to meet international standards will be completed by the end of this month, according to Chinese organizers.

As the first main venue ready for competition since early August, the Harbin Ice Hockey Arena has hosted a series of testing events, such as the national men's championship and a club tournament of four teams from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member countries, over the past month. This provided a needed opportunity to test air conditioning, refrigeration, ice-making, as well the scoring and statistics display among other key functions all of which were put through their paces in real-time operation.