ADF STAFF
After becoming Ghana’s first skeleton racer in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Akwasi Frimpong is planning to compete in the 2022 Olympics in China.
Frimpong, 32, lived in a one-room home in Ghana until he was 8, when his mother moved to the Netherlands. By high school, Frimpong was one of the best sprinters in the country. He became the Dutch National junior champion, earning 16 medals. He planned on running in the 2012 Summer Olympics, but an injury kept him off the team.
Refusing to give up on his Olympic dream, Frimpong learned to be a brakeman on a bobsled team. But he came up short, making only the national Dutch team as a reserve for the Winter Games in Russia in 2014.
That’s when he took up the skeleton. The dangerous sport involves riding a tiny one-man sled, stomach-down and head-first. Skeletons race the same courses as bobsleds, hitting speeds of up to 137 kilometers per hour.
Frimpong had to earn his way to the Winter Olympics, rising in the world rankings to the top 60. As CNN noted, he made the Olympics on January 15, 2018 — two years after taking up the sport. He did not medal at the games.
He is the second Ghanaian to compete in the Winter Olympics. Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong competed in the slalom in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada.
Eritrea, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Togo competed in the Winter Games in 2018, the most African countries ever represented. It was the first time for Nigeria and Eritrea. Fifteen African teams have competed in at least one Winter Olympics, even though most of Africa has no snow or ice suitable for training.
“My goal is to come to Ghana and seek support from the Ghana Olympic Committee, sports authorities and the Ghana Sports Ministry to work together and come up with a four-year plan, so in 2022 we have more than one athlete,” Frimpong told Africanews.
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