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"Snow Leopard" ready to hit slopes in Vancouver

Adam Hainsfurther, For The Miami Student

The Olympics represent everything great about the world we live in. Every four years the world is reminded that sportsmanship matters, cheaters never prosper and that even the little guy has a chance to hit it big.

In Ghana that last item has never rang more true as it does today. This year Ghana makes it's Winter Olympic debut in a sport that until recently no one would have ever guessed. Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, or as he prefers to be called, "The Snow Leopard," has had a long trip to the top of Whistler Mountain, and there was never a chairlift in sight.

Nkrumah-Acheampong, who was born in Glasglow, Scotland and raised in Ghana, only started skiing six years ago after moving back to the United Kingdom. When he landed at London's Heathrow Airport in 2004 it was snowing, as if foreshadowing the turn his life was about to take. After two years on indoor slopes, he moved to the outdoor slopes in a failed attempt to make it to Torino in 2006. And although he never made it to Italy, Nkrumah-Acheampong's story was enough to get the attention of the sponsors he would need to keep his training going.

"My coach told me just to avoid any embarrassment," Nkrumah-Acheampong told the BBC in 2009 while discussing his first downhill run. "I shouldn't try to turn, I should just go straight down, so that's what I did, straight down."

The road to Vancouver was not without its bumps. In order to qualify for the games a skier's personal rating needed to fall between 120 and 140 World Ski Federation points. The closer to first you finish in a race the more points are deducted from their rating. Nkrumah-Acheampong's rating started out at 1,000 points. He finally breached the 140-point barrier in winter 2009 on the slopes of the Italian Alps.

"Some people where skeptical, others just did not believe it was possible to train in such a short period of time and try and qualify, but I think now I can stand up and say it's possible," he said.

But now that he's qualified, Nkrumah-Acheampong has no delusions of gold, or even silver or bronze for that matter. All the Snow Leopard wants is to make it down the mountain in his custom tailored, leopard-print suit and to be taken seriously.

"For the Olympics, I want to ski down that mountain and have people and say, ‘Wow, that guy is skiing very well for skiing only six years and he's not last,'" he said.

As for being the first of his countrymen to make it to the Olympics to blaze the snow-lined trail, the Snow Leopard has high hopes for the future. Ghana's government has already promised to help pay for the tropical nation's first artificial slope, which hopefully will be ready in time for the next Winter Games in 2014, and Nkrumah-Acheampong hopes this is only the beginning.

"I have a unique opportunity to open up a special door into the Winter Olympics for Ghana so I hope I go to the Olympics and ski in such a way that people go ‘wow,'" he said.


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