Word: skying
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Everybody appreciates good losers. During the Olympics, we adore spectacular ones. Remember British ski jumper Eddie the Eagle or the 1988 Jamaican bobsledders? Such efforts are so amazingly futile that the athletes win fans' hearts, if no medals, and garner the kind of media adoration that even winners don't usually...
Then last spring, he had an idea: he would ski in the Olympics. He had first seen cross-country on television, during Calgary in 1988, and tried the sport after moving to Wisconsin. (He also tried downhill but says, "Why would you want to go through that? I could slam into a tree and just die!") Though he wasn't much good, he thought he could do well enough to cause a stir. Then he could attempt a noble bait-and-switch, getting Cameroon's television or radio stations to give him air time to tell about his Olympic experiences...
...Menyoli got in touch with the International Ski Federation, which told him to go to his national Olympic organization. "I was surprised that a Cameroonian could be interested," says Colonel Hamad Kalkaba Malboum, president of Cameroon's National Olympic and Sports Committee. "But I heard the idea and supported him." With his country's administrative backing and his own savings, Menyoli set off for Alaska and Canada last fall for his five required qualifying races. He placed last in four races and second-to-last in one, but finishing was all that mattered...
...still can, if you like, make jokes about the cross-country ski team, which will get buried in ice chips. It's not the team's fault. The worst-kept secret this side of bike racing is that the best cross-country skiers, seeking superhuman endurance, are often druggies. "If you take the results page and look at the Top 30," says Justin Wadsworth, 33, who will compete in his third Games at Salt Lake City, "up to 40% could possibly be dopers ... It almost makes me sick." Last year six Finns failed drug tests at the world championships. Rest...
...state's leaders know that. So, as if by rote, they recite the advantages of living in Utah: low crime, great mountains, those five national parks, a tech-savvy population with the nation's highest per capita ownership of computers, and 45-min. access to world-class ski resorts from the center of Salt Lake. Yet the image of Paradise Postponed persists. The Mormon presence is always there in the background, a faint theme song that never gets turned off. "My parents think I am insane to live here," says Katherine Glover, 36, an urban planner who moved to Salt...