why do black athletes fail to compete in the winter olympics?

[lone]

Seven black athletes making history at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

by FOLUKÉ TUAKLI
The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang is here and we’re excited to see key athletes showcase their amazing talents for Team USA. From bobsled to hockey, these are some of the athletes who will be making #BLKHistory all month long.

Follow these athletes on their journey in the Olympic Winter Games as they compete for the gold for Team USA.

MAAME BINEY
Event: Short Track Speedskating
Handle: @BineyMaame

Maame Biney, 17-year old short track speed skater from Reston has qualified for the Olympics. The Washington Post via Getty
Biney made national headlines when she qualified in speedskating for her first Olympic team at the December 2017 track trials. The video of the 18-year-old high school senior in the final qualifying race went viral and was watched more than five million times on Facebook. Originally from Ghana, Biney is the first black woman to make the Olympic speedskating team and the second-ever African-born athlete to represent the U.S. in the Winter Olympics. Known for explosiveness off the starting line, Biney dominates the 500-meter races for short track skating. While training for the Olympics, the bubbly college senior studies online classes to graduate with her friends in the spring and apply to chemical engineering programs for college.

SHANI DAVIS
Event: Long Track Speed Skating
Handle: @ShaniDavis

Shani Davis competes in the men's 1,000 meters during the U.S. Olympic long track speedskating trials in Milwaukee. Morry Gash / AP file
One of the most decorated athletes in long track speedskating, Shani Davis is a four-time Olympic medalist earning two golds. The 35-year old Chicago native even earned a phone call from a then-senator from his home state of Illinois, former U.S. President Barack Obama, after his historic win at the 2006 Torino Olympics. Davis, featured in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History, is recognized as a legendary sports icon among greats like Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson. This will his fifth Olympic games.

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ERIN JACKSON
Event: Long Track Speedskating
Handle: @ErinJackson480

Erin Jackson competes in the Ladies 500 meter event during the Long Track Speed Skating Olympic Trials at the Pettit National Ice Center on Jan. 5, 2018 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Stacy Revere / Getty Images
From amateur to Olympian, Erin Jackson made national headlines when she qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics just four months after first picking up speedskating. Making history, she earned third place in the 500-meter race at the U.S. Olympic Speed Skating Trial, the first black woman to secure a spot on the long-track team. The 25-year-old central Florida native is a 10-time world-champion inline skater and is a former roller derby player competing with the New Jax City Rollers, switching to ice in February 2017. She also graduated laude with an undergraduate in materials science engineering from the University of Florida and hopes to return back to school to pursue her master's degree.

ELANA MEYERS TAYLOR
Event: Bobsled
Handle: @elanameyerstaylor

Bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor poses for a portrait during the Team USA Media Summit ahead of the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games on Sept. 25, 2017 in Park City, Utah. Ezra Shaw / Getty Images file
Daughter of record-setting NFL athlete, Eddie Meyers, Meyers Taylor inherited her father’s discipline, athletic ability, and grit. She was offered college scholarships in four sports from a myriad of universities and ended up playing softball at George Washington University. Inspired by track athlete turned pusher Vonetta Flowers, the first African-American to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics, she repurposed her athletic background and drive to become one of the most accomplished pilots in bobsled.

Beyond her incredible strength and velocity, Meyers Taylor is known for being the first American female bobsled driver in a world championship to earn a World title in 2015. She was also the first woman to break the gender barrier in four-man bobsled alongside Kallie Humphries in the 2014 World Cup competition.

In Sochi, Russia she regrets a mistake on her last run, losing the gold medal by a tenth of a second. She returns in her third Olympics with her husband, Olympic alternate for the U.S. Men’s bobsled team, Nic Taylor, in the hopes of being worthy of redemption of the gold medal.

KEHRI JONES
Event: Bobsled
Handle: @misskehribaby

Bobsledder Kehri Jones poses for a portrait during the Team USA PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics photoshoot. Harry How / Getty Images file
The 24-year-old former Baylor University track and field star athlete was personally recruited to join the U.S. Women’s Team by star bobsled athlete, Elana Meyers Taylor. The 5-foot-1-inch sprinter broke the start record in her first World Cup appearance and never looked back. She later pushed Meyers Taylor to win the gold medal at the 2017 World Championships. Not only quick on the ice, Jones graduated from Ellison High School in Killeen, Texas at the age of 16, earned her undergraduate degree in education by age 20 and earned her master’s degree in health and human performance by age 21. Like her father who served in the U.S. Army and was stationed for in South Korea, Jones is thrilled to represent the United States of America on one of the world’s largest platforms.

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AJA EVANS
Event: Bobsled
Handle: @ajalevans

Bobsledder Aja Evans poses for a portrait during the Team USA Media Summit ahead of the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games Tom Pennington / Getty Images file
This is the Chicago Native’s second Olympic Games. She took home a Bronze medal at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Before her bobsled career as a five-time college All-American track and field athlete as a shot putter and sprinter at the University of Illinois, Evans earned three Big Ten titles. She continued to train in track and field until an ACL injury ruined her chance to compete the Rio 2016 Olympics. Since she has concentrated her efforts solely on bobsledding. At the 2012 USA Bobsled National Push Championships, she set a start record. With the support of her brother Fred Evans, a former defensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings, she trained with New York Jets running back Matt Forte. Coming from a long line of elite athletes, her family motivates her to excel. Her father, Fred Evans, is the first African-American swimmer to win a national collegiate title in swimming in 1975.

JORDAN GREENWAY
Event: Hockey
Birthday: 02/16/1997
Handle: @jgreenway12

Ice Hockey player Jordan Greenway poses for a portrait during the Team USA Media Summit ahead of the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games Tom Pennington / Getty Images file
Greenway is the first African-American player to sit on the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey roster. The 6-foot-6 inch, 230-pound forward helped Team USA win the gold at the World Junior Championships in 2017. The highly sought-after New York native was selected for the 2015 NHL draft by the Minnesota Wild, but the 20-year-old athlete (his 21st birthday is Feb. 16) decided to continue his collegiate career at Boston University.

 

[lone]

Winter Olympics 2018: All eyes on remarkable Nigerian women bobsleigh team

• ANTOINETTE MULLER
  
• AFRICA
  
• 09 FEB 2018 01:48 (SOUTH AFRICA)
  41 Reactions

The 2018 Winter Olympics will have the greatest African representation ever. But it’s the Nigerian women who will compete in the bobsleigh and skeleton event who are among the most remarkable. By ANTOINETTE MULLER.






The 2018 Winter Olympics will begin in Pyeongchang, South Korea on Friday and while South Africa has sent a lone competitor – alpine skier Connor Wilson – the Games will have a broad African representation.

In fact, the Games will feature the most African countries at a Winter Olympics. Eight countries from the continent – Kenya, Morocco, Ghana, Madagascar, South Africa, Togo, Eritrea and Nigeria – will compete at this year’s event with 13 athletes (a record since 1994) all vying to become the first African to win a medal.

It is a monumental effort considering the challenges the athletes face to compete.

Beyond the usual – maladministration, lack of funding and you know, the weather – there’s the added complexity that in many countries, the federations that govern winter sports simply do not exist.

When Senegal's Lamine Guèye became the first black African athlete to compete in the games back in 1984, he had to ask for the help from the International Ski Federation to set up the sport's federation. That has been a recurring theme and a similar story for the women who are likely to be the stars of this year’s African show.

US-based trio Seun Adigun, Akuoma Omeoga and Ngozi Onwumere will make up Nigeria’s bobsleigh team at the Games, while Simidele Adeagbo will compete in the women’s skeleton.

It’s the first time the country will take part at the competition, and added to their challenge of actually getting into a bobsleigh, they also had to set up the federation from scratch.

It will be a historic moment when the women debut, but elite-level competition isn't foreign to all of them. Onwumere is an All-Africa Games medallist, having won silver in the 200m sprint in Brazzaville 2015 and gold in the 4x100m relay.

But the two sports are worlds apart and the journey to get here has been nothing short of remarkable. It started off with a wooden sled in Houston -- built by driver Adigun herself from scrap metal – and breaking three helmets in qualifying. Their story has captured wide media attention, including a visit to the Ellen DeGeneres Show, which was all sorts of wonderful.


“Everybody is going absolutely nuts. The crazy thing about it is most people don’t really understand what bobsleigh is but they don’t care. They just know the flag is raising high, and they are excited about it,” Adigun told DeGeneres when asked about the reaction in Nigeria.

That all four women were born in the United States doesn’t matter. Like many expats in the African diaspora, they all understand the broader vision and the impact they can have on the lives of others.

“After realising that my participation as a brake man on the United States women’s bobsleigh team had grown to be far larger than me, I knew this was something I had to do. I noticed my ability to potentially empower and positively influence millions of people resided in my decision to give back to the country of Nigeria,” Adigun said in an interview with sheleadsafrica.org.

And Adigun was right. With the widespread attention their ambition of becoming Africa's first-ever bobsleigh team got, Adeagbo, who will become the continent’s first ever skeleton racer at the 2018 Winter Olympics, had her interest piqued.

Adeagbo, who was born the in the States to Nigerian parents but living in Johannesburg where she worked as running brand manager for Nike, got in touch with the trio via social media after reading about their story.

Adeagbo figured bobsleigh is a four-person sport and she wanted in, only to be told it's only men who race in fours (the women race in twos). Her dreams weren’t completely dashed. A seed was planted and she kept pondering.

In July 2017, she saw a call for try-outs for the Nigerian Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation in the most unlikeliest of places – Houston, Texas.

She arrived in Texas on the morning of trials and flew back to South Africa on the same day. Two weeks later, she was invited to a camp in Canada. And now, Adeagbo – like the rest of her Nigerian team mates – is on the verge of making history and leaving a legacy they hope will continue to inspire others to break barriers.

 

[saywalahi]

nobody gives f*ck about these loser sports meant for naago

madow dominate the sports that matter

wtf is winter olympics i bet it doesn't even get half he viewership the normal olympics get.

 

[warculus]

dont like snow.
Winter olympics is meant for white people

 

[MARAQ DIGAAG]

dont like snow.
Winter olympics is meant for white people

Let the cadaans have their Winter Olympics and weird sports .the meadows have dominated many other sports .

 

[Saalax Bidaar]

Winter Olympic is designed for white people. It is a way to make them feel better not being able to compete in regular Olympic games

 

[MARAQ DIGAAG]

Xalimos would be good at curling .

 

[jamal9]

black pple hate winter

 

[Lostbox]

I doesn't snow in black dominant country's and they don't investment in winter sports.

 

[Basra]

black people were not made for Winter. U ever hear black dont age? Black dont crack? Well if they lived in Winter places, the feet soles crack and they get depressed.