Introducing 'The Snow Leopard'

The famous Jamaican bobsleigh team lives on in Vancouver 2010, but Ghana's first Winter Olympian Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong is set to steal the limelight this year.

He's known as "The Snow Leopard", and skis in a leopard-print racing suit.

Believed to be the only black skiing competitor at this year's Games, the 35-year-old Ghanaian will compete in the slalom at Vancouver, having reportedly quit his job as a safari guide to focus on the slopes.

Nkrumah-Acheampong had never seen snow until five years ago, when he took up skiing before attempting to qualify for the 2006 Winter Olympics.

But a grounded flight on the way to
qualifying events in Iran meant Nkrumah-Acheampong missed out on an Olympics berth.

Four years on, Nkrumah-Acheampong has booked his place in the Vancouver Games, and he says he's no "Eddie the Eagle" - a reference to the hapless British ski jumper Michael Edwards who finished last in two events at the 1988 Games.

"I am not, and will not end up being, an Eddie the Eagle at the end of the day," Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong said last month.

"Because, to me, sports is a serious thing."

Cool Runnings returns
Meanwhile, the Jamaican bobsled team will again feature at Vancouver, but it is another Jamaican who could win the nation's first Winter Games medal.

Errol Kerr, a dual citizen with a Jamaican father and an American mother, will compete in the new Olympic event of skicross.

Skicross will see four competitors racing shoulder-to-shoulder down a slope featuring man-made jumps and sharp turns, like a combination of skiing, motocross and BMX.

Which makes it a perfect sport for Kerr, who has a background in all three sports.

He is rated a genuine chance of snatching a podium finish in what would be a first for Jamaica at the Winter Games.