China’s Figure Skating Stars Launch App to Promote Sport

One of China’s top figure skating pairs on Thursday launched a mobile app promoting the sport of ice skating in advance of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.

Retired skating duo Pang Qing and Tong Jian developed the app, iSkating, or Aihuabing in Chinese, to address the lack of information on facilities and coaching services that observers say has hindered China's bid to push winter sports successfully to its citizens, the China Daily reported on Thursday.

Developed in partnership with IT professionals, the app provides news updates on international skating events, a search function for public skating rinks, and online figure skating instruction videos.

Users can also book skating rinks via the app and sign up for coaching sessions with Pang and Tong at selected rinks.

"The ambition to promote winter sports participation en route to hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics is inspiring, but providing qualified service, facilities and technical guidance should be considered first," Tong, who was paired with Pang to win the 2010 World Championships in Italy, told China Daily.

"We expect the app could help more people embrace figure skating and winter sports in general as a healthy lifestyle," he added.

China's Winter Sports Administration Center also offered their support to Pang and Tong by filming a series of instructional figure skating videos for the app performed by its affiliated athletes.

"Their commitment to promote the sport even after retirement is really motivating. As the event governing body, we definitely will provide full support to their initiative," Ren Hongguo, Party chief of the center, said at the app's launch on Thursday.

Pang and Tong retired from competitive skating in 2015.

China's central government, led by President Xi Jinping, has issued an ambitious plan to involve 300 million Chinese in winter sports over the next six years.