Snow Ruyi National Ski Jumping Centre

2022 Winter OlympicsSki jumping venuesSports architectureHebei landmarks
4 min read

From the air, the ski jumping venue at Zhangjiakou looks like an ancient Chinese ornament dropped into the mountains. That was the point. Designed by architect Zhang Li, the National Ski Jumping Centre earned its nickname "Snow Ruyi" because its curved profile echoes the shape of a ruyi -- a ceremonial scepter symbolizing good luck in Chinese culture. Built into the gap between two mountain ridges 180 kilometers northwest of Beijing, the facility took its unconventional site and turned architectural constraint into the defining image of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Building Between Two Mountains

Construction began in 2017 in Chongli District, Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, with an original completion target of 2019. The unconventional location between two hills complicated the engineering significantly, pushing the timeline to November 2020. The Olympic ski jumping stadium was inaugurated on December 21, 2020, with the facility featuring both a normal hill (HS106) and a large hill (HS140). The stadium's finish area includes grandstand seating for 6,000 spectators, and in a characteristically pragmatic touch, the flat jump-out zone doubles as a football pitch during summer months. The hill's S-curved profile, which gives it the ruyi silhouette, was not merely decorative -- it followed the natural contour of the terrain between the ridges, making the symbolic and the structural inseparable.

Olympic Fire on the Snow

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of all international test events during the 2020-21 season, meaning the facility's premiere competition came at a Continental Cup event in December 2021. German ski jumper David Siegel won the inaugural large hill event and set the first hill record at 141 meters. When the Olympics arrived in February 2022, Snow Ruyi produced a string of historic moments. On February 5, Slovenian Ursa Bogataj won the women's normal hill gold and set a hill record of 108 meters. The next day, Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi took the men's normal hill title. On February 12, Norway's Marius Lindvik won the men's large hill gold, while Kobayashi set the large hill record at 142 meters in the first round.

Controversy at Altitude

The most dramatic storyline at Snow Ruyi had nothing to do with flight distances. On February 7, 2022, the inaugural Olympic mixed team ski jumping event descended into controversy when five female jumpers from Japan, Austria, Germany, and Norway were disqualified for equipment violations -- oversized jumpsuits that equipment controller Agnieszka Baczkowska said were in some cases up to 10 centimeters too large, visibly obvious even without measurement. The disqualifications reshuffled the medal standings, with Canada earning a surprise bronze. But the gold medal was never in doubt: Slovenia's team of Nika Kriznar, Timi Zajc, Ursa Bogataj, and Peter Prevc dominated from the start, winning by a record margin of 111.2 points. It was the first mixed team ski jumping event in Olympic history, and it arrived wrapped in both triumph and protest.

From Olympic Stage to Training Ground

The ultimate hill record at Snow Ruyi was set not during competition but during a Nordic combined training session on February 14, 2022, when Germany's Vinzenz Geiger soared to 142.5 meters on the large hill. Austria won the men's large hill team gold that same day. After the Games, the facility transitioned to its intended post-Olympic role as a national training center, with plans to add junior hills to develop China's nascent ski jumping program. The venue sits in a landscape that was virtually unknown to winter sports before Beijing's Olympic bid transformed Chongli from a modest ski area into an international winter sports destination. Snow Ruyi remains the facility's most architecturally striking legacy -- a modern sports venue that drew its shape from a tradition stretching back thousands of years, built into mountains that had never seen a ski jump before the twenty-first century.

From the Air

Located at 40.91N, 115.47E in Chongli District, Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province. The distinctive S-curved profile of the ski jump is visible from altitude against the mountain ridges. The facility is 180 km northwest of Beijing. The nearest airports are Zhangjiakou Ningyuan Airport (ZBZJ) and Beijing Capital International (ZBAA/PEK). Terrain is mountainous with elevations around 1,500-2,000 meters. Best viewed from 3,000-6,000 feet AGL.