On February 2, the torch relay of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games opened. Pan Gang, chairman of Yili Group, took over the Olympic torch again after 14 years and became the torchbearer of “double Olympics”. He passed the auspicious cloud torch during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Pan Gang said: “it is not only my personal honor and responsibility to become the torchbearer of the Olympic Games, but also the honor and responsibility of all Yili people. As an enterprise that has worked with the Olympic Games for 17 years, Yili has always adhered to the original intention of quality.”
When he learned of Beijing’s successful Olympic bid 20 years ago, pan gangmeng had a wish that “foreign athletes should not be allowed to come to China with milk on their backs”. It is this wish that opens the fate between Yili and the Olympic Games. When BOCOG was just established, Pan Gang led the team to communicate. The feedback was that “the country has not started the Olympic market development plan yet, and you will come back when there are rules in the future”.
In November 2005, Yili won the fierce competition and joined hands with the Beijing Olympic Games. After obtaining the qualification to serve the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Yili spent three years upgrading its quality management system and supply chain management ability, and let the world begin to understand the quality of China’s dairy industry through the Olympic Games. Later, recalling the choice at that time, Pan Gang believed that this was the most correct thing Yili had done in more than a decade.
In the more than 10 years after the Beijing Olympic Games, Yili and Olympic athletes jointly participated in large-scale events such as the London Olympic Games, Sochi Winter Olympic Games, Rio Olympic Games and Pingchang Winter Olympic Games, providing nutritional support for 32 training bases, 28 Summer Olympic teams, 11 Winter Olympic teams, 640 training venues and more than 12000 athletes.
In 2015, Yili signed a seven-year strategic cooperation with the winter sports management center of the General Administration of sports of the people’s Republic of China. On December 15 of the same year, as soon as the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee was established, Pan Gang, who was still on a business trip, immediately wrote a letter expressing his full support for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and formally submitted an application to the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee. On August 30, 2017, Yili became the only official dairy partner of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games and winter Paralympic Games.
It is understood that in addition to Pan Gang, 16 representatives from Yili grass-roots and industrial chain partners, including Xu Yanfei from Yili cooperative ranch, fan Qingyao from Yili factory, Li Baobao, manager of central China of Yili cold drink business department, and Li junran, dealer representative, have also become torchbearers of the 2022 Winter Olympics.
