Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene
I'm rooting for the lone athlete from Ghana...
love it!
Very sad for the Georgian team . What a tragedy.
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http://www.ctvolympics.ca/alpine-ski...+olympic+dream
I LOVED this guy!! he considered himself a winner if he didn't come in last..as long as he beat one person he was a winner...loved it..
Snow Leopard achieves Olympic dream
The Globe and MailBy Dawn Walton, The Globe and Mail Posted Saturday, February 27, 2010 3:19 PM ET
Judging by the boisterous applause, the autograph seekers and young women screaming "I love you," you'd be forgiven for thinking hockey prodigy Sidney Crosby was nearby.
But all the adoration was aimed at a 35-year-old ski racer who had no hope of medaling at the Olympics and looked like a long shot to even finish a tough men's slalom course in Whistler.
On Saturday, Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, affectionately called Snow Leopard, became the first Ghanaian to ski in the Games.
"Usually when I race nobody's watching - I can do my own thing - but there was a lot of pressure," he said.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Nkrumah-Acheampong's family moved to Ghana when he was a baby, and later lived in Zambia, Nigeria and again in Ghana, before he returned to the United Kingdom to attend university. He currently resides in Milton Keynes, Britain with his wife and two children. That's where he first learned to ski on artificial snow at an indoor ski park in 2003.
Nkrumah-Acheampong competed here as part of a program to broaden the appeal of the Winter Games to non-traditional countries. As part of the qualification criteria he competed at the World Ski Championships in Val d'Isère, France last year where his best result was 67th in the slalom.
Backed by heavy self-promotion, he was a celebrity before he became the last man to push out of the Olympic start gate and plod his way down the first slalom run in 1 minute 9.08 seconds, a gaping 21.29 seconds behind the leader. He was faster at least than Erjon Tola from Albania who was 46.15 seconds out after climbing up the course to make a missed gate.
By the end of the day, Nkrumah-Acheampong, clad in a leopard print ski suit, did better than 53 athletes who either didn't finish or were disqualified. After his second run he wound up 48th, 43.28 seconds behind the winner, Italy's Giuliano Razzoli. But his Olympic dream was complete.
"Somebody else was last today, so I'm okay," he said.
What about Sochi in 2014?
"No chance," he said, laughing.
Instead, Nkrumah-Acheampong is busy working on construction of a ski slope for grass skiing in Ghana.
"You'll hear of skiing in Ghana soon," he said.