How Athletes From Tropical Countries Train For The Winter Olympics

Bobsled. Cross-country skiing. Figure skating. Alpine skiing. These are but four of the 15 sports played in the Winter Olympics. Every four years, athletes from around the globe gather to compete in cold climate sports. Naturally, growing up in a cold environment is going to give you an edge. According to Statista, Norway has won a total of 368 medals of which 132 were gold since the Winter Games began in 1924. In fact, the Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjoergen won 15 medals alone between 2002 and 2018. Certainly, growing up in a region where the culture practices winter sports has its advantages.

This has not stopped tropical countries from trying to break the ice ceiling. Since 1972, athletes representing tropical countries have regularly participated in the Winter Games. However, not a one has won a medal. But they have earned a different kind of Olympian glory. They are fan-favorite Olympic underdogs which is reflected in the 1993 film "Cool Runnings," about the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team. People cheer for these athletes as unlikely heroes, perhaps pondering how they were drawn to winter sports and how on earth could they train where there is no snow. Let's take a look at some of these tropical countries and the athletes who are the Winter Games perennial underdogs.

Of all tropical countries to participate in the Winter Olympics there is none more famous than Jamaica. This was brought about by their 1988 bobsled team whose story was very loosely told in the 1993 film, "Cool Runnings." While the film, according to Olympics.com, took certain liberties, it nevertheless captured the underdog spirit of the team. ESPN related the true story of how an attache for the American embassy in Jamaica, George Fitch, after seeing a push cart derby in the island country's mountains, realized that Jamaica could produce a great bobsled team. 

In Fitch's reckoning, you did not need so much ice skills as you needed sprinting speed and pushing power. Fitch spent $92,000 personally to finance the team. Today reported that the team trained at the Jamaica Defense Force Base, Lake Placid, and Austria with used equipment and ad hoc facilities such as a concrete track. Their appearance in Calgary showed dogged determination as the inexperienced team crashed and pushed their sled over the finish line. But their Olympic spirit has won them more than a medal. 

As for the film, Fitch commented to ESPN, "I was personally offended by the film because I'm not a disgraced Olympic bobsledder who's a drunk, who's spending the rest of my life in some pool hall. But that's Hollywood."

The Ghanese skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong has one of the coolest nicknames in Olympic history: "The Snow Leopard." According to Mentalfloss, Nkrumah-Acheampong was first introduced to skiing after he left Ghana and moved to the United Kingdom in 2000. He became a receptionist at an indoor ski center and became hooked on the sport. He commented to the Daily Record, "All I had ever known about skiing was watching a James Bond film, so it really just took off from there." To make a point of his difference from other skiers, he wore a leopard print snowsuit. 

Training wise, the Snow Leopard said to the Daily Record, "The coaches said I had natural talent and I've never found skiing difficult. But it has been a hard fight. Even now, when I go to big events, there are people who just refuse to believe that an African can ski." Still, his skill grew to the point where he became the first Olympian to represent Ghana at the Winter Games in 2010. His chief ambition was to finish. This he did, finishing 53rd out of 54 – the rest of the 102 athletes did not complete the course. After the Olympics, the Snow Leopard worked to train Ghana's own batch of young skiers, this time using grass skis which use wheels to simulate the feel of the powder.

Malaysia made its debut in the Winter Olympics in 2018 with figure skater Julian Yee. According to KXAN, as a young boy, Yee was drawn to figure skating because it was indoors and air-conditioned, a relief from the tropical climate of Malaysia. His biggest challenge was finding places to train. Ice rinks are limited in Malaysia, and most are small venues at malls. In fact, he needed to convince rink owners to open early to allow him to train. 

However, it was apparent he needed to step up his game. At age 12, he was sent to a figure skating camp in South Korea. Yee stated, "It was my first proper training camp, my first time without my parents, my first time training with other people, my first time training with people from other countries." However, to train for international competition, he needed to move to Canada which was helped through crowdfunding. In 2018, he ranked 25th in men's singles, according to Olympics.com.

In 1984, Lamine Guèye of Senegal became the first Black African to compete in the Winter Games. Gueye, according to Reuters, was a member of the country's elite and the grandson of a prominent Senegalese politician who served on the French parliament when the country was a colony. He and his sister moved to France at a young age, and it was while he was at a boarding school in Switzerland that he fell in love with skiing. Much of Guèye's training was with other skiers within Europe. However, his training also was blemished by racism. Reuters quoted him in an interview: "I found myself confronted with prejudices — that Africans, blacks, had not skied, until now," 

Despite these obstacles, he managed to qualify himself as an Olympian from Senegal after he registered the Senegalese Ski Federation (he neglected to tell officials he was the only member). 1984 was not the only appearance of Guèye. Olympics.com tells us that he competed in the 1992 and 1994 Games, also in Alpine skiing. Since then, he has become an outspoken critic of the structure of the Olympics claiming that modern qualification standards squeeze out many less well-funded countries.

While attending college in the United States in the late 1990s, Eric Maleson was, as reported by the Seattle Times, perhaps inspired by "Cool Runnings." He longed to start a bobsled team for his own native Brazil. To that end, he recruited Edson Bindilatti and Ricardo Raschini. The Washington Post reported that the team primarily trained in Lake Placid, New York, where Bindilatti was shocked at their initial 90 mile per hour run. 

The team became known as the "Frozen Bananas." They competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they came in 27th as detailed by Olympics.com. Talk ensued to devise a pushcart track for a sled with wheels so that they could train in Brazil. This was the beginning of a bobsled tradition in the country, and Bindilatti became the team captain. However, most of the team's training still occurs in Lake Placid in partnership with their American counterparts. 

The Brazilians are proud of their achievement. The Washington Post quoted Bindilatti stating, "We are no longer the ugly ducklings. We want to introduce bobsled to Brazil and show the world that a winter sport can be practiced in a tropical country."

Fiji is an island archipelago in the South Pacific with an average winter low temperature (as reported by Britannica) in the 60s. The country is about as far from snow as possible. Still, in 1988, Rusiate Rogoyawa became the first Fijian to compete in the Winter Olympics as a cross-country skier. According to "Backpacker," Rogoyawa had been in Norway as a student and was immediately drawn to Nordic skiing. In 1986, he returned and stayed to learn the sport. 

Rogoyawa's greatest challenge was adapting to the Norwegian culture which was not as laid back as Fiji's, sometimes forgetting to show up for training. Still he was a "good skier and true amateur." It seems that Rogoyawa wasn't the most punctual of athletes, but he certainly must have trained well enough to reach the Olympics. According to "The Evolution of Cross-Country Skier Training," by the mid-1980s, cross-country skiers often ran through mountainous regions and weight trained in order to prepare their bodies for the rigors of skiing, as well as follow goal-oriented training for distance and speed.

"XXIII Olympiad" reports that while Rogoyawa finished 83rd out of 85, he showed the Olympic spirit when he stated, "I think we should be given a chance to try our best. I can never become as good as the talents in Norway, but I can show that I can ski." According to Olympics.com, he competed again at Lillehammer in 1994, taking 88th place in the 10 kilometer cross-country event.