A fanciful idea that started out as a joke among young members of one of Malaysia’s most prominent families has snowballed into a fully fledged ski team and dreams of Olympic success.
Despite being a tropical, snowless country, Malaysia has created its own alpine ski team — albeit with only two members — which is currently competing at the 8th Asian Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan.
Unlike the antics of Venezuela’s Adrian Solano, who wobbled amateurishly around the slopes at last week’s Nordic World Ski Championships in Finland, both Malaysians are accomplished skiers, driven by the ambition of promoting winter sports in a country where football and badminton dominate.
Partly inspired by the Jamaican bobsledders who defied conventional wisdom by competing at the 1988 Winter Olympics, more and more warm-weather countries have been entering teams in snow and ice events in recent years.
Othman Mirzan, the grandson of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, thought his country should do the same after flippantly suggesting his family had already begun their own team.
“It started as a joke. My siblings and I all skied together and the running joke was always that we were the Malaysian ski team because we’re the only Malaysians people see skiing,” he said.
“From that, the idea kind of grew. It started out as ‘Let’s see if this is viable’ and then when we figured out it was viable we had to see what it takes.
“There’s a lot of rings you have you have to jump through. I was 17 at the time and no one takes a 17-year-old seriously when they are trying to start a national association, but the Malaysian Olympic Committee were very enthusiastic.”
Text: AFP
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