China
Chinese embrace once foreign sports
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-08 21:12
 |
Large Medium Small |
|
 An athlete lunges to the finish line in the team competition at 2009 Tour of Wuyi Mountains Road Cycling Championship held in Wuyi Mountains, east China's Fujian province December 6, 2009. [Photo/Xinhua] |
Daimon Ling is among the new class of white-collar fitness fanatics. The 31-year-old deputy general manager at a records management company in the southern city of Guangzhou said that traditionally his peers liked to spend their leisure time playing mahjong. But more of them are getting into mountain biking and cycling on the roads.
"Ten years ago, there were no Web sites in China about cycling that we could go to for information," said Ling, who rides an expensive carbon-fiber model produced by famed Italian bike maker Tommasini. "But now, there are about 10 of them that I check."
Ling is the ideal customer for many outdoor gear companies that are aggressively moving into the market. In Guangzhou, the Columbia Sportswear Company runs infomercials on small flat-screen televisions in taxi cabs. One ad features a young man who works in an airline company but has a passion for hiking in Tibet. He's shown wearing a floppy hat and fancy hiking boots, trekking among snowcapped mountains and bright blue lakes.
Trek Bicycle Corp. is another company that's focusing on China's growing masses of weekend warriors. The American company -- which already has 250 dealers across the China -- recently moved its Asia director, Philip McGlade, from Japan to Beijing.
"The potential here is massive," McGlade said.
He added that another factor that makes the Chinese market so attractive is that it's relatively easy to reach great places to ride because suburban sprawl is rare in China.
"Even in cities like Shanghai and Beijing, the two largest cities, the ability to access the outdoors is actually really good," McGlade said.
One of the pioneers in introducing mass athletic events to the Chinese is the Swedish company Nordic Ways Group, which for 11 years has been organizing Scandanavian-style sporting events in China. The firm known for organizing the Vassalopet cross-country ski festival started out in China in 1998 by promoting orienteering.
Now, Nordic Ways has branched out into mountain biking in Inner Mongolia, grassland marathons and Nordic skiing. It organizes between 20 to 25 events each year, said Niclas Hellqvist, the group's Beijing-based managing director.
The company strives to replicate famous Swedish athletic events in China. Last September, Nordic Ways organized a 110-mile road cycling race around Fuxian Lake in Yuxi in southwestern China. The inaugural event, which attracted 300 cyclists, was modeled after the annual Vatternrundan in Sweden, billed as the world's largest recreational cycling event.
The race's sponsor list included the makers of PowerBar energy snacks, Pearl Izumi sportswear and Look bicycle components. Most of the participants were local Chinese.
Hellqvist said that the Beijing Olympics in 2008 helped get more people interested in sports. It also got more local officials interested in hosting events, he added. More of them are viewing sports as a good way to highlight their cities and attract investment.
Hellqvist declined to discuss how well Nordic Ways has been doing financially.
"Put it this way, we have been in China since '98 and we're still here," he said. "It's a tough job but we're still here."
