A record 12,500 athletes from 45 countries are participating in 40 sports over 15 days of competition at the Games which were postponed by 12 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A total of 54 venues are being used including 12 that are newly built, while the rest have been either renovated or were in the process of being constructed.

The Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center Stadium, China Hangzhou Esports Center and Chun'an Jieshou Sports Centre Velodrome are among the arenas that have been created for the Games.

The state-of-the-art facilities have received high praise with Olympic Council of Asia acting director general Vinod Kumar Tiwari hailing them as "Olympic Games standard".

Hangzhou is the third Chinese mainland city to stage the Asian Games after Beijing in 1990 and Guangzhou in 2010.

Mao Genhong, deputy secretary general at both Hangzhou 2022 and Hangzhou Municipal People’s Government, said the experience of holding the Asian Games "lays foundations for multi-sport events in the future".

He added, "It is the largest scale of multi-sports events.

"The Olympics had 10,000 athletes where the Asian Games had 12,000.

"We have 45 competition events.

"We held 57 test events in 2023.

"This year we held 10 international test events."

Mao revealed that Hangzhou was in the process of trying to bring more major sporting events to the city over the coming years.

"Some of the local Governments will take charge of their own venues," he said.

"It’s just about having clear responsibilities.

"If we can raise to the same standard as the Asian Games, I think this clear responsibility will have some advantages.

"The local hosts and venues will jointly work on the venue operation and in the post-Games era we hope that we will use the experience of the Asian Games operation."

Mao claimed the facilities built for these Games will benefit the city for many years.

"What we know is that we will build Hangzhou into a city of sports so those venues will benefit the people for the sports for all programme and help us to develop the sports economy," he said.

"The venues are for the people so for people’s fitness and for sports events.

"Whenever there are venues, you have opportunities to host sports.

"We want to build a city for sports and the venues will play a bigger role.

"We have already applied for some [Championships] and we have already bid for some other events for the professional usage of the venues."

Chinese fans have been flocking to events in Hangzhou and the five co-host cities in Zhejiang province, with some sports experiencing sellout crowds over the first five days of competition.

Hangzhou 2022 have claimed that more than CNY¥500 million (£56 million/$68.5 million/€65 million) worth of tickets have been sold for the Asian Games.

"[Sale of] tickets is beyond the expectation of HOCOG [Hangzhou 2022 Organising Committee]," added Mao.

"We will do our best to satisfy people’s need for tickets.

"A lot more people want to buy tickets.

"That will also boost confidence for holding events in the future."