Performers dance and sing at the closing ceremony of the 14th National Winter Games in Hulunbuir, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, on February 27, 2024. Photo: Courtesy of the organizing committee

The 14th National Winter Games of China, which commenced on February 17, concluded on Tuesday evening in Hulunbuir, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northern China, with a grand closing ceremony.

In addition to four programs featuring singing and dancing performances about Inner Mongolia and the dedication of volunteers, the closing ceremony also presented a showcase from the next host of the Winter Games, Northeast China's Liaoning Province. 

The performance, involving 45 performers and lasting approximately six and a half minutes, integrated the local characteristics of Liaoning,  which will host the national winter sports event in 2028 for the first time. 

Serving as China's premier winter sports event, this edition featured more than 3,000 athletes from across the nation competing in 176 events spanning eight sports: skating, skiing, biathlon, curling, ice hockey, bobsleigh, luge and ski mountaineering. 

Aligned with the upcoming 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the Games covered 180 events across eight sports. Notably, ski mountaineering was added as a new major category after the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Since the inception of China's National Winter Games in 1959, which were traditionally held in Northeast China's Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces until 2016, this marks the second occasion that the Games have ventured beyond northeastern China, following the 13th edition held in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This year's Games marked the first time that the event has been hosted in Inner Mongolia.

In a bid to promote mass participation in winter sports and to further solidify the achievements of getting 300 million people involved in winter sports, this edition introduced mass participation events for the first time. These events included cross-country skiing and speed skating, with four disciplines, all of which concluded before the opening ceremony.

Moreover, departing from the traditional team-based participation format, this edition witnessed a historical shift as teams were formed based on provincial, autonomous region and municipal units.

A number of renowned athletes, including Su Yiming, Xu Mengtao, Fan Kexin, Wu Dajing, Ren Ziwei, Lin Xiaoshan, Liu Shaolin and Liu Shaoang, participated in this edition. 

Su clinched gold in the men's large hill and men's slopestyle events. However, freestyle skiing aerials Olympic champion Xu faltered in the final jump of the women's individual event, settling for fifth place. Jilin's Sun Long dominated the 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m individual events, while in short track skating, alongside teammates, secured gold in the men's 5000m relay, surpassing his strong contestants who are Olympic champions.

The Games also saw the emergence of young athletes with outstanding performances. Ban Xuefu, the 21-year-old flag bearer of the Inner Mongolia delegation, clinched the championship in the men's parallel giant slalom snowboarding event. 

In the men's freestyle skiing aerials event, 19-year-old Chen Shuo executed a difficulty level 5.1 maneuver and landed smoothly, securing the gold medal with a score of 125.97 points. In the women's 500-meter event of the short-track speed skating youth group, three athletes achieved results surpassing world youth records.

Zhang Xin, an official with the General Administration of Sport of China, said that the Games successfully achieved the purpose of preparing athletes for the 2026 Winter Olympics, according to a report by the Xinhua News Agency.