SNOWMAKING AT the Olympics is hardly new, first
occurring in 1980 when stubborn skies over Lake Placid
led to staffers shoveling truckloads onto barren cross-
country ski trails. And thanks in part to climate change,
the practice has become increasingly necessary, with
subtropical Sochi using about 80% man-made snow in
2014 and arid PyeongChang topping 90% four years later.
But the 2022 Games will take it one step further: None
of the snow will be real. At both the alpine skiing venue
in Yanqing, a mountainous Beijing suburb, and at the
biathlon, cross-country, freestyle, nordic, ski jumping and
snowboarding venues in Zhangjiakou, a ski destination
100 miles northwest of the host city, the temperatures
regularly dip below freezing, but natural monthly snowfall
is best measured in centimeters. “The Olympics cannot
rely on that,” says Michael Mayr. “So they have to be sure
the snow is there when they start.”
Here the onus falls to TechnoAlpin, an Italian snowmak-
ing supplier for whom Mayr, 46, works as an area sales
manager overseeing China. To hear him describe the vast
amount of equipment necessary to stage these Olympics,
TechnoAlpin might as well be outfitting an arctic armyChina’s capital
city will become
the first to HOST
BOTH A SUMMER
AND WINTER
GAMES. The one
problem? With
virtually no natural
snow to be found,
the falling flakes
will be fully fake
80GUIDE TO THE GAMES