Emerging winter sports help provide careers for new broadcasting talent

As a reporter in training, Chen Yiru was given the opportunity to wait four hours in extremely cold weather beside a fence at a venue in Ruka, Finland, to interview a skier she admired.

Standing across from Chi Chunxue, who just finished competing in the 2019-2020 FIS Cross-Country World Cup, Chen was able to ask three of her prepared questions.

"The several-minute interview made me excited and nervous the whole day," Chen said, adding that she couldn't have conducted it without training.

A student at Hebei University in Baoding, Hebei province, Chen was sent with nine other students for three months of classes at Kisakallio Sports Institute in Lohja, Finland in September to learn about winter sports broadcasting.

"The experience in Finland has given me a new career choice as a winter sports journalist," said Chen, 21, who returned from Finland on Dec 16.

Chen said all 10 students have applied to volunteer for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

According to Li Yahong, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Hebei University, the school started professional courses on broadcasting winter sports in March, the first of its kind among universities in the country.

"With winter sports emerging in the country, spurred by the 2022 Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing and Hebei province's Zhangjiakou, we need a lot of broadcasting talent to report or comment on competitions during and after the Games," Li said.

The courses cover sports photography, technical and tactical analysis of winter Olympic sports, sports commentary, English interviews and reports, radio program editing and hosting, and TV program hosting.

Dong Jianming, head of the Institute of Ice and Snow at Zhangjiakou University, said a good broadcaster must have in-depth professional knowledge about sports.

"Only this way can they give good and correct reports and comments," Dong said.

But there is not much qualified talent, although winter sports in China have been developing very quickly in recent years, Li said.

According to a survey last year by the National Survey Research Center at Renmin University of China, 60 million people participated in winter sports during the 2017-2018 season.

However, compared with broadcasting talent in popular sports such as football and basketball, or sports in which the country has had great achievement, like table tennis, those for winter sports, especially for skiing, are in short supply, Li said.

"Our aim is to cultivate talent that can do professional volunteer work when the 2022 Winter Olympics come and can devote themselves to related jobs after graduation," she said.

The university has established an online platform for students to practice and test their hosting and commenting skills.

It will also conduct research on teaching materials and try to set standards in the field.

After the first batch of students, more will be sent to Finland in the following years.

Yu Dongwei contributed to this story.