Three surprise athletes competing in Vancouver

Even though the Jamaican bobsled team did not qualify for the Games, there are still some unexpected competitors who hope to bring hardware home for their country.

After a quick search of the athletes page on the Vancouver Olympics site, I discovered a few noteworthy bios.

• Thirty five-year-old Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong is a downhill skier from Ghana and the first Ghanian athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics.
• Dow Travers is a 22-year-old downhill skier competing for the Cayman Islands, a country for which athletes predominantly compete in swimming and track and field events. He is the first Winter Olympian for his home country.
• Prince Hubertus von Hohenlohe will be skiing for Mexico in the Men's Slalom and Men's Giant Slalom events. He founded the Mexican Ski Federation in 1981 and competed in his first Winter Olympics in Sarajevo in 1984. He is also a businessman and photographer, but here's the unlikely part of his story: he's 51.

 Here's more about Nkrumah-Acheampong's unlikely journey.