Tibet has achieved all-around progress in the sports sector and marked a historical breakthrough. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Tibet autonomous region has poured nearly 5.23 billion yuan ($724 million) into sports projects over the past decade, sports authorities said at a news conference in regional capital Lhasa recently.

Over the past decade, Tibet has achieved all-around progress in the sports sector and marked a historical breakthrough. In particular, the region has been making efforts to enhance the protection and heritance of ethnic sports projects and the development of outdoor sports over the period.

More than 22 ethnic sports including the Damchirim Horse Race of the region's northern Damshung county, and the Lhasa kites have been put on the national and regional-level intangible cultural heritage lists, and items like Tibetan tug-of-war (Yajia), and Tibetan wrestling were included as events in national ethnic sports meets, Wang Dejun, spokesman of the regional sports bureau, told a news conference Monday.

Items including weightlifting (stone-lifting) and Tibetan chess have been included in regional ethnical sports meets. The equestrian events during the annual Tibetan New Year and the Tibetan tug-of-war Yajia were listed as excellent sports events of Chinese traditional sports cultural items in 2020, Wang said.

The participation of residents in sports has been improving dramatically over the decade, with more than 997,000 people regularly taking part in physical exercise throughout the region, accounting for more than 28 percent of the population, Wang added.

The region has more than 8,600 sports venues, more than 3,000 sports events have been held over the decade, and more than 380 medals have been won by Tibetan athletes in various international games.

Nyima Tsering, the head of the bureau, said the International Olympic Committee has added ski mountaineering as one of the events of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, and ski mountaineering is a newly emerging sport in China.

"Presently, Tibetan athletes account for nearly 80 percent of the national ski mountaineering team, and these Tibetan athletes are more competitive in challenging European athletes," said Nyima Tsering, adding Tibet will work actively toward promoting ice and snow-related sports to gain glory for the nation.

Enriched with natural resources such as snow-capped mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, grassland and forests, Tibet is an ideal place for climbing, trekking, rock-climbing, skiing, cycling and trail running, he said.

In the future, Tibet will strive to build a diversified outdoor sports industry platform, aiming to host sports events such as the Trans Himalayan International Cycling Extreme, the China Tibet Mountaineering Convention and the National Ski Mountaineering Championships, he said.

We expect the outdoor sports industry will eventually become a pillar industry in the region and contribute to the economy, he added.

According to the bureau, the region has been carrying out seasonal cleaning on climbing mountains and mountaineering rescue since 2013, and more than 50 metric tons of waste has been cleaned up in the past few years.

The region dispatched professional mountaineering assistance for the emergency evacuation of climbers on the northern slope of Mount Qomolangma — known as Mount Everest in English — during the Nepal earthquake in 2015, and more than 100 professional Tibetan climbers worked as support crew for the remeasurement mission of Qomolangma in 2020.