Inside China's Winter Olympic Training Base: Can I Survive the WIND TUNNEL

Now today I've come to see the facility, specifically something known as heykerjee, so it's when you're

training

, your time and distance are recorded in real time to put on that board. There we are going to see some of the other facilities. and let's go there quickly before they find the fastest pair of ice skates so these are the tubes which is the comprehensive

wind

tunnel

laboratory is one of the two

wind

tunnel

laboratories here at the

training

base

previously it was a diesel engine testing station is now where skiers and ski jumpers come to test their stance and analyze their wind resistance data and hopefully improve their aerodynamic performance for competitions, so I'm going into the tunnel of wind, yes, inside the wind tunnel, I'm going to see how much I can endure, yes.

It's quite windy the hardest thing is being on your knees in that position wow the skiers really had a hard time so I'm inside the training

base

s so that's the sixth degree of freedom training room there are two of these training rooms inside the base and they are full of these giant electronic platforms with screens in front of them they can be used for the event train bobsleigh bobsleigh skeleton alpine slalom biathlon now I'm not good at any of those activities, I've never I've done none of them, so I'm probably handy at using them, although it looks a bit like a very advanced computer game.

I'm also not good at computer games, so this is skeleton bobsleigh. I don't really know how to use it, but I do know how to use it. your feet to break the pressure points on the board for skeletal control, this is basically the closest you can get to reality without actually being on the ice, so let's try it, these are the least natural positions, so let's eat, wow, okay, okay. so if I apply a little pressure, oh god, oh god, oh, oh my god, I already turned upside down, that's ridiculous, I'm going backwards, the controller is very hard on the neck, luckily my first race of skeleton took place in a six degree freedom training room and not on the ice, I would have been in trouble, otherwise, see, you are in a fantasy, cross-country skiing, oh, countryside, I don't know if this that's right, I can't actually ski, you can probably notice the tap, oh yeah, they're helping me put my shoes on, yeah, so I'm getting ready to try the platform for alpine slalom.

You have to wear these special shoes. They only have a size 41. I'm a size 46, so these are a little uncomfortable for me, okay, can you? I can't imagine how fit the athletes are. I've only done these four things. I need to go to bed. This is where athletes come to rehab. Magnetic hyperthermia therapy. Electrotherapy. Light therapy. Short wave therapy. I'm here to recover and get a massage, no you can't say it but I'm smiling and I know you said I couldn't get a massage but I found this room and in this room there is cryotherapy but you have to take it. you take off your clothes there is an underwater treadmill but you have to take off your clothes and there is this commercial test you don't have to take off your gloves oh lovely water massage I will do it I did it previously as a result of the The weak foundation of ice sports and snow in China, many of the countries' national teams were absolutely stationed abroad for long-term training.

Now not only is it so expensive, but it also limits the amount of training those teams and athletes can do. It limits the amount of analysis and research that can be done, but this training base goes a long way toward addressing that issue and that can only be good news as we approach the days of the Winter Olympics. I wonder if I should buy one of those strange ones, probably quite expensive.