Harbin, China, January 12, 2024: The transfer of knowledge from one organising committee to the next host city is a big part of the smooth transition and success of an international multi-sport games.
Take the case of the OCA’s Asian Winter Games.
The OCA Coordination Committee for the 9th AWG includes His Highness Sheikh Fahad bin Jalawi bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Vice President of the Saudi Olympic and Paralympic Committee – host of the 10th AWG in Trojena in 2029.
Between now and 2029, Sheikh Fahad is gathering as much information as possible, from Harbin and also from Milano-Cortina, Italian hosts of the next Winter Olympics in 2026.
The OCA caught up with Sheikh Fahad on Friday morning after his visit to the Harbin Sport University Student Skating Rink - venue for the women’s ice hockey competition at Harbin 2025.
“Harbin is really a nice city, amazing city, nice people, nice hospitality, and the Chinese Olympic Committee and the Chinese community are already having the best experience of hosting any kind of games,” said Sheikh Fahad.
“A few months ago, we witnessed the success of the Hangzhou Asian Games. Regarding the winter sports, two years ago was the Winter Olympic Games which was a great success as well, with a difficult timing with the restrictions of covid, but they organised it in a very high standard.
“So, I really believe that the Asian Winter Games here in Harbin will be a high-standard games. The venues are really amazing, and Harbin as a city has experienced the Asian Winter Games in 1996 and the Winter Universiade in 2009, so I am sure that this will be an amazing games. I am looking forward to being here next year.”
During the OCA Coordination Committee meeting in Harbin on Thursday morning, OCA Director General Husain Al-Musallam pointed out the importance of the transfer of knowledge from one city to the next host, and said Saudi Arabia would make Olympic history by hosting the AWG in 2029 at Trojena.
Sheikh Fahad said: “This is very important. I discussed this with Captain Husain and I discussed it with the Chinese side regarding the observer programme.
“But we don’t want to have it as a normal observer programme; we want to get deep on the Chinese side to understand how they organise the winter sports.
“Our team already started two years ago for the preparation and I think that Saudi will be ready in 2029. But, of course, we have to work with the Chinese to get the most of the experience they have in Harbin next year, and hopefully we will have a successful games in 2029.”
Sheikh Fahad said they had already signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Italian Olympic Committee and Milano organising committee of the next Winter Olympics in 2026 and would do the same with Harbin.
“For me, I always believe preparing the venues is not the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge is to prepare the clean field for the athletes and to prepare the athletes, especially Saudi people they think that we don’t have any winter or we don’t have snow - but we do.
“We have a lot of Saudis who are practicing in winter sports. For the snow sports, a lot of Saudis, if you go now to the famous skiing cities, you will find it full of Saudis.
“On the other side, in the ice sports, we have a lot of clubs in Saudi practicing ice hockey, curling, skating; so it is very popular in Saudi - but our challenge as an Olympic Committee is to flip from a hobby to a professional athlete.
“I think we started before Beijing 2022. We had a great success story when we qualified with the three athletes but, unfortunately, we had only one quota. But three athletes reached the point of the qualifying quota, so I really believe Saudi is coming up in the winter sports step by step and, hopefully in the future, we can get a medal in the Winter Olympic Games.”