A bird's-eye view of the Olympic Sports Center in Ouhai district, Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/66wz.com]
Riding the wave of mass fitness and the Hangzhou Asian Games, Wenzhou is making all-around efforts in mass sports, competitive sports, sports culture, and sports integration.
Since 1983, Wenzhou has been awarded the honorary title of "Hometown of Swimming" nine times and produced famous swimmers such as Xu Jiayu, Li Zhuhao and Liu Yaxin.
Folk martial arts in Wenzhou's subordinate Pingyang county continue until today. Martial arts activities are flourishing and national martial arts competitions have been held many times in the county. In 2001, Pingyang was named the "Hometown of National Martial Arts".
Wenzhou is the "Hometown of Chess" and produced many grandmasters such as Ye Rongguang, Zhu Chen and Ding Liren.
Dai Lili, a Wenzhou native who won the gold medal in women's doubles at the 37th World Table Tennis Championships in 1983, is the first Wenzhou native to become world champion and helped usher in an era of gold-medal success among Wenzhou people.
With the popularity of badminton in recent years, Wenzhou has cultivated a number of excellent athletes, including Li Mao, Huang Zhanzhong, Xia Xuanze and Zheng Siwei, and held hundreds of badminton competitions.
Wenzhou also enjoys a solid foundation in mass fitness. Statistics show that the total output of the sports industry was 33.25 billion yuan ($4.73 billion) in 2021, accounting for 1.65 percent of the city's GDP and the second highest in Zhejiang province.
Wenzhou is home to over 4 million fitness aficionados and had 23.87 million square meters of sporting areas in 2021, among the most in Zhejiang. It also boasts 303 inclusive gyms and 57,938 business entities involved in the sports industry.
