...BUT NOT FOR THIS MAN AS HE PREPARES TO REWRITE HISTORY
TEMPERATURES hit 38 degrees celsius this week in Kumasi, the city in which Akwasi Frimpong began his journey to become one of the unlikeliest of Winter Olympians. Next week, with the thermometers plunging far below zero in Pyeongchang, the 31-yearold Frimpong will become Africa’s first male skeleton athlete to compete at the Games. He says he has Dutch football superstar Johan Cruyff — who died in 2016 — to thank for rescuing him from a troubled life as an illegal immigrant in Holland, and Lizzy Yarnold for proving that non-Alpine nations can succeed in the sport. Frimpong spent the first eight years of his life in Ghana, where he lived in a four-foot by five-foot home with his grandmother and nine other siblings, kicking a tin for a football with neighbourhood friends. He was eventually taken to Holland, where his sprinting prowess caught the attention of the Johan Cruyff Institute, which helped him out of his status as an illegal immigrant. Frimpong remained firm friends with Cruyff until the latter’s death from lung cancer in 2016. After moving to college in Utah in the United States, injury put paid to Frimpong’s track career and led him to bobsleigh, in which he represented Holland before taking the opportunity to switch to skeleton. Frimpong added: ‘I have three ambitions for Pyeongchang — to break barriers and show that black people can be a part of winter sports, to make history for my country, and to prepare for the 2022 Games. ‘I want to break the stereotype of Cool
Runnings and go one step further. I am realistic it is not going to happen in 2018 but I want to go to the 2022 Games and win. It’s all about daring to dream.’