Team Ghana has arrived in PyeongChang, South Korea for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games and the team was led by Chef de Mission (CDM) Jerry Shaib Ahmed.
He arrived in time to welcome Ghana’s sole representative for the games, Akwasi Frimpong who will be participating in the skeleton discipline of the games.
The two together with Frimpong’s coach and physiotherapist represented Ghana at the opening ceremony of the games which took place on Friday, February 9, 2018.
Meanwhile, Frimpong’s event will begin on Monday, February 12, 2018 at the Plympic Sliding Centre and end on Saturday, February 17, 2018.
He would be the second Ghanaian to participate in the Winter Olympic Games after Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong also known as ‘Snow Leopard’ participated in the Vancouver Games in 2010.
Nkrumah-Acheampong took part in the alpine skiing event and finished 53rd out of 102 participants, out of whom 54 finished.
Ghana’s CDM would later be joined by the President and the Secretary-General of the Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC) to support Akwasi Frimpong in his competition.
50 entries (male and female) were made in the skeleton event out of which 30 are males and 20 females. Canada and Germany are the two countries with the highest entries in the men’s competition with three athletes each.
Frimpong qualified for the games after fulfilling the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules, which required a minimum of five races on three different ice tracks in two years.
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During his first season, he competed in 12 races on four different ice tracks - Calgary, Utah, Lake Placid and Germany. In addition, Frimpong needed to be ranked in the top 60 on the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) world ranking by January 14, 2018.
Frimpong was ranked 95th in world during the 2016/2017 season, though it was only his first year as a skeleton athlete but managed to climb to the 60th position to earn the qualification.