Athletes treasure children's drawings

Inside the goody bag given to Olympic athletes, high-tech flip phones, coveted Bing Dwen Dwen mascots and Bluetooth earbuds didn't impress Jamaican Alpine skier Benjamin Alexander half as much as two drawings by a young primary school student.

The 38-year-old posted videos on social media after arriving in the Olympic Village to share with his followers what was inside the gift bag. Among a pile of digital products and souvenirs, he found two blue paper tubes containing the hand-drawn works with Winter Olympic themes and the contact details of their creator, a schoolboy from Changchun, Jilin province.

One drawing was about the two mascots for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics and the other depicted four short track speed skaters racing on the ice. "How awesome is that!" Alexander said in the video.

He was not the only one impressed by such drawings, received by every Olympic athlete, with many sharing their reactions on social media.

Canadian freestyle skier Elena Gaskell called the drawings a "super cool thing" in her vlogs. "It's like a custom little drawing from kids, which is really sweet," she said.

Mika Vermeulen, an Austrian cross-country skier, made a special video to thank the creator of his picture. "Your picture is beautiful and I'm very happy to receive it from you," he said.

Australian mogul skier Britteny Cox said she also felt warmed after receiving an "incredible gift" of a picture of a female skier standing on a mountain. She put it up on her wall so that she could look at it all the time.

"It was really special," she said. "One of my values and passions as an athlete is to inspire young people."

Loving the drawings so much, Alexander later wrote an email to their creator, Hou Jiaqi, inviting him to watch his race on Feb 13 and encouraging him to try skiing himself one day. To his surprise, Hou soon replied to him, telling the skier that he was a member of his school's skating team, along with a video of him training.

This interconnection has created a buzz on Chinese social media.

"I found it so touching," one netizen said. "They didn't know each other, lived in completely different cultures and environments, but created a small but tangible connection because of this chance."

In September, the Winter Olympics organizing committee called for submissions of children's drawings for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics from around the country. The committee received more than 43,000 works and selected 7,500 as gifts for delegations attending the Games.