Saudi Arabia struggles to build desert ski resort for Winter Games

Saudi Arabia is reportedly in discussions to relocate the 2029 Asian Winter Games amid delays to the construction of ski slopes in the middle of the desert.

The Trojena ski resort, where the games would be held, is part of the kingdom’s $500bn (£373bn) efforts to construct the futuristic glass city of Neom.

But cost over-runs and engineering hurdles mean it is unlikely to be finished in time for the competition, the Financial Times reported.

South Korea and China are being considered as potential alternative venues, according to the report, citing a Western diplomat and former Neom employee.

The plans for the resort promise it will offer 30km of ski-runs, including the Asian Games’ 400m slope, created from artificial snow. Under the proposals, the water for the snow will be pumped from 200km away in the Gulf of Aqaba.

The 140m-deep lake due to hold the water was meant to be filled this month, but construction is behind schedule and tankers are currently required to bring in drinking water.

Riyadh hopes to delay its hosting of the Asian Games until 2034, though people familiar with the project told The Telegraph that making the deadline was still possible. “The difficulties have been magnified by the schedule imposed on the project,” one said.

“The Saudis are really committed to building something there,” said another. “Maybe not on the scale that they have imagined in the first place.”

The work has been delayed in part because of the area’s mountainous terrain, sitting 2,600m above sea level near the border with Jordan. The road to the resort has just one carriageway in each direction, with sharp turns and a steep gradient posing challenges to construction vehicles.

“These constraints don’t work well with [Trojena’s] accelerated schedule,” one former worker told the FT, with other employees saying there were contingency plans being made for holding the games at Trojena even if the planned facilities were not all ready for 2029.

The Neom project was promised by Saudi’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as a “civilisational revolution” but it has drawn criticism over its vast expense, over-ambitious plans and the forced removal of tens of thousands of locals from the area.

The Line, a 170km-long skyscraper city only 200m wide, was set to house 1.5 million residents by the end of the decade and “shine a light on alternative ways to live”, the Crown Prince promised.

But today these ambitions have been dramatically scaled back with promises of just 300,000 people to be housed within a 2.4km stretch by 2030.

Saudi Arabia has invested billions of dollars in sports as it tries to soften its reputation as a repressive dictatorship. Cristiano Ronaldo, the world’s most successful footballer, was brought to the country with the lure of a £178m annual salary.

Last year Saudi was awarded the rights to host the 2034 football World Cup in spite of the country having one of the highest rates of execution in the world, only topped by China and Iran. On Thursday, rights group Reprieve reported that Jalal al-Labbad, identified as a child defendant by UN human rights experts, had been executed.

The offences he was charged with date back to when he attended protests at the age of just 15.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]