Chinese ice maker on the "Snow Dragon" (Concentric Circles of the Winter Olympics)

The picture shows the team of ice makers making the final repair of the ice surface of the track before the men's steel frame bobsleigh race on February 11. On February 14, at the National Bobsleigh Center, Germany's Mariama Yamanka competed in the women's single bobsleigh race at the Winter Olympics. Xinhua News Agency reporter Jiang Wenyao photographed on February 14, Sun Yue (first from the left) led the ice-making team to conduct a pre-game inspection of the ice surface, mainly to check the smoothness of the ice surface and the flatness of the arc surface. Photo courtesy of the interviewee The picture shows the ice-making team working on sprinkler ice on February 13. The picture provided by the interviewee shows Zhu Yongtao showing the equipment of the ice-making team. Photographed by Wang Meihua, a reporter of this newspaper

Smooth as ribbons, as flat as mirrors, as white as milk – this is how the National Bobsleigh Center track feels. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, the ice surface, known as the "Snow F1 Circuit", will produce a total of 10 gold medals in three sports: bobsleigh, bobsleigh and steel frame bobsleigh.

In the field of the Winter Olympics, athletes performed speed and passion in "Snow Dragon". Behind the competition, the Chinese icemakers busy in the "Snow Dragon" have turned the clear and flat ice surface of the track into a work of art.

From ice making to curing

Where is the difficulty in the work of an ice maker

At night, the mountains are silent. Walk into the "Snow Dragon", the arena is as bright as day. In the evening, the athletes who finished the competition left one after another, and the icemakers began another round of busyness.

According to the schedule, the bobsleigh events of the Beijing Winter Olympics are mostly held in the evening, and most of the official training is arranged during the day. In order to ensure the smooth progress of the race and taxi training, the maintenance work of the track generally starts at 5 o'clock in the morning and can only end at about 00 o'clock at night.

"We have to carry out multiple rounds of maintenance of the track every day, and repair and replenish the ice in time according to the athletes' sliding trajectory and ice damage." Zhu Yongtao, captain of the ice-making team of the National Bobsleigh Center and from MCC Shanghai Baoye Group, a subsidiary of China Minmetals, introduced that the work of ice makers is mainly composed of four parts - ice making, ice repair, ice repair and maintenance.

Ice making is the uniform spraying of water mist on the cooling unit of the track with a sprinkler head to ensure the overall ice formation of the track.

Ice replenishment is the use of a special ice shovel, the ice water mixture is filled to the key positions such as the inflection and exit of the car, the bend and the ice is easy to fall off, etc., smoothed and waited for it to condense and then slowly sprinkle the water, so that it solidly condenses and forms a whole with the surrounding ice surface.

Ice repair is a special ice knife weighing about 20 kilograms of ice knives that are used uniformly to continuously repair the formed sliding surface on the track.

Maintenance, mainly including defrosting, cleaning and sprinkling maintenance...

"'Snow Dragon' is made up of 16 curves with different inclinations and curves, and each curve and every surface is related to the performance and safety of athletes." Sun Yue, head of operation at the National Bobsleigh Center and from MCC Shanghai Baoye Group, a subsidiary of China Minmetals, said, "The ice surface of the track should be as smooth as a baby's skin, and the requirements for ice makers are very high. ”

The work of the ice maker is tedious and heavy: it often takes thousands of sprays of water mist to make the thickness of the ice surface meet the requirements of the event; after repairing the 1975-meter track of the "Snow Dragon", it is necessary to use ice knives to repair hundreds of times; before and after each race, training and gap, the ice team must tirelessly carry out ice maintenance patrols, cleaning up the ice ballast and snow frost on the track over and over again.

From 2 hours to 15 minutes

How faster and faster the maintenance is

To become an ice maker, physical fitness is the first level.

"A sprinkler like this weighs more than 40 pounds when it is empty, and more than 70 pounds when it is full of water, and we often have to carry it in and out of the track for work, often sweating." The ice surface of the track is low, and the sweat will form a thin ice "lock" on the body. Zhu Yongtao introduced that the work intensity of ice makers is very large, and the physical requirements are very high.

"To this end, we have carried out special physical training, running 5 kilometers every morning, and other time periods have also been arranged accordingly." Sun Yue said that after passing the physical fitness level, it will enter the ice making learning link.

The temperature of the "Snow Dragon" track is basically more than ten degrees Celsius below zero, and it will be lower at night. The reporter stayed by the side of the track for a while, obviously feeling cold. Ice makers work in a low-temperature environment for a long time, which is a test of physical strength, technology and will.

"Ice work is a process of practice that makes perfect." Zhu Yongtao said that the initial ice-making team took 2 hours each time to complete the maintenance of the entire track, which far exceeded the stipulated time.

"Under the premise of ensuring quality, if you want to improve the speed, you need to be very careful and know every part of the track, such as where there is more frost, where the ice needs to be replenished." Zhu Yongtao said that after a period of intensive training, the team's maintenance time for the track has gradually changed from 2 hours to 1 hour, 30 minutes, 15 minutes...

"Now, a group of 10 people is maintaining the entire track, and the fastest record is 11 minutes." Zhu Yongtao said.

Behind the great increase in speed is the countless painstaking efforts of the ice maker team. For more than 100 days, Zhu Yongtao has walked about 20,000 meters on the track every day, which is equivalent to the distance from Beijing to Guangzhou; the ice-making area of the track is about 7,000 square meters, with an average of 4 times a day, and the cumulative maintenance area is equivalent to 6 Tiananmen Squares - which is the epitome of the daily work of Chinese icemakers.

"After many test matches and the Experience of the Beijing Winter Olympics, this team can fully handle the service guarantee of large-scale events." Sun Yue said.

From learning to practicing

How Chinese ice makers are made

To the surprise of the reporter, the captain of the ice-making team who was talking in front of him was engaged in a job that could not be beaten with the eight rods of ice-making two years ago - sales. From a salesman to the captain of the ice-making team of "Snow Dragon", what kind of transformation has Zhu Yongtao experienced?

"In November 2019, the construction of the 'Snow Tour Dragon' reached the end of the period, and the ice making and operation work could be considered, and the team began to recruit a group of Chinese ice makers." Sun Yue said that soon after the notice was issued, hundreds of people signed up, including both the early builders of the "Snow Dragon" and some athletes who retired from various countries. Of course, there are salespeople like Zhu Yongtao.

"At that time, ice making was an unfamiliar profession to me, and I heard that it was to serve the winter Olympics, so I rushed over to participate in the career interview." Zhu Yongtao said that with his outstanding physical fitness and rapid learning ability, he was successfully selected as one of the first icemakers of the National Bobsleigh Center.

"The name IceMaker sounds simple, but there are a lot of skills to master." Zhu Yongtao said that the ice-making work will be exposed to many aspects of knowledge, such as learning to drive an ice repair tractor in the early stage, and then learning the production of ice knives and the maintenance of ice tools. Communication with foreign ice makers should be in English, from the initial poor communication to now smooth communication, Zhu Yongtao and the team members have worked hard.

In Sun Yue's view, the growth experience of the ice-making team of the National Bobsleigh Center can be divided into 3 stages: the first stage is "seeking knowledge", China's ice-making industry started relatively late, in order to master the ice-making technology as soon as possible, the team rushed to Pyeongchang, South Korea for a series of studies; the second stage is "solving the puzzle", the team invited foreign icemakers to guide and answer the problems encountered in practice; the third stage is "self-examination", Chinese ice makers and foreign ice makers have many differences in height, physical fitness, equipment use habits, etc., in order to solve practical problems The ice-making team explored and learned at the same time, and successfully completed the ice-making task.

"When we first repaired the ice, we were equipped with standard ice knives, and later found that there was a certain difference with our physical condition, so we combined their height, arm span, strength, ice repair habits, etc., adjusted the width and angle of the ice knives, and studied and produced each person's exclusive ice knives." Zhu Yongtao said.

"There are bitter and tearful ice-making work, but it is worth it to contribute to the country." Zhu Yongtao said, "We must use the ingenuity of excellence to show the style of Chinese ice makers." ”

Special Issue Coordinator: Liu Fei

Visual coordinator: Pan Xutao