Google Eric Moussambani, went 1:53 in the 100 meter freestyle in the 2000 summer Olympics and won his heat.

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2x Deca-Ironman World Cup (10 Ironmans in 10 days), 2x Quintuple Ironman World Cup (5 Ironmans in 5 days), Ultraman, Ultra Marathoner, and I once did an Ironman.

You mean the Eel?!

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Haha! I was just talking about this with a coworker...

I then told him that since I am eligible to compete on behalf of Panama (mother born there), I should just try to qual in any event and get to go.

That being said, "hero" is a bit much...

And this guy lives in the US (TX). Apparently he also did a bunch of ironman races and thought that since he already does a "hard sport", he can pick up cross-country skiing (this is all according to one video/coverage of him that I saw). He is a MOP age grouper at IM events.

He would get beat at a 15km xc-ski event by most pre-teens at my local cross-country skiing place.

I think it is great that he picked up the sport of cross-country skiing, which is super awesome and EVERYONE should do it. He should definitely race local xc-skiing events and dance his heart out at the finish line.

But this is the OLYMPICS we are talking about...

IOC has different rules that the international ski association.
In the world championship you actually have to qualify to be able to participate.
This is a rule to keep the clowns out.

I would love to have more qualified athletes in the olympics instead of a bunch of tourists.

fify

Meh. If he legitimately qualified for a spot available to the country I applaud his effort. I get it, it's the Olympics, etc. etc. But the Olympics has always been about the best from each country, not just the best overall. Otherwise it would be all Scandinavia and Northern Europe in cross country

If people are bitter (sounds a lot like the Kona lottery bitch threads) they should lobby the IOC and/or their national OCs to change the qualification requirements.

Personally, I have more of an issue (in the form of a passing thought that doesn't get me worked up) about people using marriage and family relationships to compete for a country they've never been to.

More so than just that, the IOC goes out of it's way to get the maximum number of countries to be able to enter (with some level of sensibility).

Lightweight rowing is a case in point - it has developed at the Olympics to allow countries to enter that don't naturally have the very large physique required for heavyweight rowing.

This has been a THING for a while dating back to the Jamaican Bobsled Team all the way back to the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympic Games, Eddie The Eagle in the Ski Jump at Lake Placid I think, or the Kenyan Philip Boit XC Skiing in Nagano in 1998 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVTnavf3QI4 Video of Boit finishing, the 15K (I think), WAY behind the race winner, and maybe the best XC Skier of all time the great Born Dahlie, who is waiting for Boit at the finish line in the video clip.

As I seem to recall the premise with the Boit thing was, let's take a great Kenyan runner and see if we can turn him into a world class XC-Skier - as you can see it did not work out so well! I also heard that it was a bit of a promo thing by either Nike or one of the ski companies.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

good idea! I am South African and I see there is only one South African at the winter olympics (Alpine). I have no idea how good he his, but since I live in Colorado I'm sure I can make this happen!

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Instead I had to wait for an extra half an hour before being able to see the podium celebration and the first ever winner in XC event of the same event 3 olympics in a row!!! Go Dario :-)
I'm biased being Swiss.

Well, OP made two points. "Why is he a hero?" and "What's the point?"

I agree that the point of the Olympics is that "the best from each country compete" (though I'm not sure what I think about the relatively lax way in which "from a country" is adjudicated, and in any case it is far from clear that this guy is the best instead of the best (only?) who bothered to try).

But I'm 100% with OP that calling this guy a 'hero' is ridiculous. What heroic thing did he actually do?

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Michael

Well, my original response that i never posted was i don't equate some beat writer's description of other skiers giving him a "hero's welcome" is the equivalent of saying he is a hero. It's a descriptive term for the event, and anyone reading it can tell from the context the writer is not saying "he's a hero."

(and one story says the winner was there cheering him on. If he don't got an issue with it, I don't)

But that was too much to write. But since you brought it up. I think it's a bit of misplaced outrage

As far as the second point, as we know in our world the best in any AG in any race in the world are those that choose to show up.

Dario was so impressive yesterday.
It is good for the sport to have other than Norwegians decorating the top 3.

His former coach Aukland was commentating on Norwegian radio. He was really moved.

Fwiw I grew up ski jumping and had the opportunity to train with James Lambert ( he was much better than I). His enthusiasm and commitment to the sport were obvious and it was too bad Eddie has ruined Lambert's chances of being taken seriously at the time.

Wow! There's "critique my stroke" waiting to happen.

While I agree that there should be broad-based international representation, there should be some reasonable performance bar (ex. you could probably win your event at a high school invitational).

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A friend posted a video of this on FB and said how great it was. I said it was complete BS and he probably wasn't qualified to be there. I'd wager he couldn't beat a 10 year old Finnish kid.
I took a bit of a deep dive at FIS at this guy. He looks to be typically ranked 2900-3800. Not Olympic range.
FIS website is a bit quirky, but he seems to finish near DFL in C races.
To qualify he needed to have less than a 300 ranking. It looks like he might have been 292 in the last ranking. In the other rankings, he was much higher.
I get the whole inclusion thing, but hate these crappy athletes at the Olympics.
I also hate the country shoppers. Well, I'm the 27th ranked skier from Norway, but since my grandpa visited Jamaica once, I'll change citizenship and be their Olympic team.

I was considering racing for India for XC skiing in the 2010 Olympics here in Canada as I am pretty sure I could have beat the teammates (I suppose be a team of one) and not been an embarrassment to 1.3 billion people. In 2009 I won the winterlude tri here in Ottawa which is the oldest winter tri in Canada (8k speed skate, 7k XC ski, 5k run) and was the only brown guy in a field of white guys (and beat them all). But I felt it would be uncool to race for India given that I have lived most of my life in Canada and felt the Indian team should be true India based athletes. At Kona 2010 I did race under the Indian flag and carried in the parade of nations since there were plenty of Canadians and I wanted to honor my heritage given that I was training for tri back in India even before I knew Triathlon existed....in any case my 2 cents given my Indian heritage is that on the world stage during the Olympics it should be someone coming out of the country sporting system. Kona is a different animal since qual is based on a personal investment and decoupled from National federation resources....plus Kona age group racing is not a pro this....Olympic games there is an assumption of pro level.

By the way, I kind of take exception to your thread title. By definition you and I living in a cold country have better access to these sports than hot country athletes but they should be able to send whomever they want who may be there best. I am almost certain that the top genetic material for downhill skiing may be in the NFL or somewhere in West Africa (think NFL running back build and agility and not some guys who have access to snow with perhaps inferior genetics). Same thing with long track speed skating....I doubt you are seeing the best gene pool from the countries with snow for some of these sports. But some of the countries with awesome gene pool just don't have access to facilities.

Fleck's point about the experiment to make a Kenyan elite runner into an XC skier is a flawed one. An elite runner is generally 6 inches too short and 50-60 lbs too light to be an elite skier. You need to map the gene pool to the sport.

Winter Olympics are generally a bunch of rich countries fighting for medals from a very limited global population set....so I say let the best from any country in, regardless of how slow.

Do you know the purpose and values of the Olympics?? The IOC specifically opens up to these nations. I don’t think they are considered tourists, despite how slow they may be.

Values of the olympics. Are you talking about corruption and pro doping?
But of course, these tourists fits NBC's way to treat sport.

Hey, it is easy to downplay athletes from countries that don't have access to sport with no winter facilities. Better some of them show up at the Olympics than none at all. I am on the same page as JCtriguy. If they are the best that their country can send, so be it.

Like I thought, go read a bit and educate yourself. Your cultural stereotypes are rather pathetic to listen to all the time.