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| Pita Taufatofua at the 2016 Summer Olympics |
Now, many of you will remember how the world stopped when hunky, handsome, coconut-oiled Pita Taufatofua of Tonga made his entrance at the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics carrying his country's flag.
After two previous attempts to qualify, Pita made it to the Summer Olympics to compete in Taekwondo. Unfortunately, he was eliminated early in Rio.
But his good looks and upbeat personality definitely made an impression on the world. He was featured on NBC's
The Today Show and in the games' closing ceremonies.
Four months later, he announced to his burgeoning social media that he wasn't waiting four years for the next Summer Olympics. He decided to pick a winter sport and qualify for the Winter Olympics Games in Pyeongchang.
He picked cross-country skiing.
Now, living in Brisbane, Australia, with no snow nearby presented an obvious challenge.
That and the fact that he'd never picked up a pair of skis.
But Pita was a man on a mission.
Over the course of a year, Pita would need to drop 30 pounds from his muscular Taekwondo physique and learn to ski in tropical weather.
Instead of driving long hours to the nearest mountain in the winter, he worked out on the beach with roller-skis.
According to the
Wall Street Journal which has chronicled this story in detail, there's an Olympic rules loophole that didn’t require him to ski on snow. After the Sochi games, the International Ski Federation changed its rules to allow points from roller-skiing events to count towards cross-country skiing.
To just qualify for the 2018 Olympic games, Pita needed
five finishes that satisfied a formula designed to keep newbies like him out of the Olympics. In a truly herculean effort, Pita achieved four qualifying finishes during a week of roller-skiing in Colombia this winter.
But Pita found himself one finish short. And there were no more roller-skiing events left.
Pita raised funds via
GoFundMe (Tongan culture frowns heavily on asking for support) and headed to Austria to train with a real coach in the snow.
With only six weeks to the 2018 Winter Games, there was a lot to be learned: basics like letting a faster skier pass you and knowing the different kinds of wax for your skis depending on conditions like dry snow, wet snow, hard snow, soft snow. Pita only had a stick of snowboard wax purchased on eBay.
In late December, Pita used the last of his money to compete in the final races of the season in Europe. But being new to the pace, altitude, and conditions of actual cross-country skiing he fell short.
Choosing a race in Armenia over Croatia didn't give him the results he so badly needed. Pita only had "hard track" skis and the night before the event a blanket of powder snow fell on the track.
In a harrowing journey he shared on his
Instagram, he decided to make a mad dash to that final Croatian race. With no flights nearby, Pita traveled six hours via taxi.
After racing across 5 countries over 24 hours to Istanbul Airport, he arrived at the gate 15 minutes before his flight was scheduled to depart.
But - Turkish Airlines had closed the gate and would not allow him on the plane. Truly heartbreaking.
He posted a photo of his airline ticket in hand from the airport gate with the plane in the background.
In truth, I read Pita's post six days ago and marveled at his world-class determination. This IS Olympic spirit. Sitting at my desk, I sat back and applauded all this incredible effort.
And then.
This morning my blogger buddy Larry at
The OUTFront sent me a link to the next 'straight-out-of-the-movies' chapter that had escaped me. Total props to Larry for following through.
A few days after missing his flight, Pita heard "whispers" of one more qualifying race near the Arctic Circle in northern Iceland. Over two days, he and his friends tried to reach the event even under the downpour of a massive snowstorm.
Reaching the event, the storm continued. But Pita used the time to keep conditioning himself indoors.
I know you're waiting for me to type the words, so here you go via Pita:
"On the last day of my Olympic qualification, at the end of the world, I said a little prayer before my race and then a miracle happened! TONGA IS GOING TO THE WINTER OLYMPICS! 🇹🇴 Mathew 17:20 -Faith"
Technically, the only thing left is for Tonga to name him to the Olympic team but considering there are no other Tongan skiers, I think he has this.
He will be the first Tongan skier in Winter Olympics history. Tonga’s only previous Winter Olympian was Fuahea Semi who finished 32nd out of 39 in the men’s luge event four years ago at the Sochi Games.
However, other countries have Olympic Federations and support groups but not Tonga. Pita will have to fund his own way to South Korea.
If you are so inclined, I urge you to donate anything you might feel appropriate to his
GoFundMe here.
If anyone has ever demonstrated Olympic "can-do" spirit, it's this guy.
Check out his Instagram journey below.
