text: Isaac Menyoli didn't go to Salt Lake City in 2002 with any aspirations of winning a medal in cross-country skiing. In fact, he almost didn't go at all. In order to compete at an Olympics, an athlete has to be put forward by his national skiing federation and Cameroon didn't have one.
  So Menyoli started one up, even though he was by then living in Wisconsin and working as an architect. "It was an enormous headache," Menyoli said, remembering the countless phone calls and faxes and requests for authorization from the government and the national Olympic committee.
  But despite having little experience in the sport, Menyoli was motivated to compete by something intensely personal. On a trip back to Cameroon in 1999 he was shocked to discover the extent to which AIDS had ravaged the population of his hometown, Buea.
  "There was no awareness or education about it; people thought so many were dying not because of AIDS, but because of witchcraft or voodoo," Menyoli said. "It broke my heart and I knew I had to do something about it. I knew the issue needed attention, so what better way than the Olympics?"
  Menyoli had no back up crew in Salt Lake City; he had to arrange his own racing gear, check himself in with race officials, prepare his skis and deal with the kind of administrative formalities that most Olympians have done for them by team management.
  He finished 83rd and last in the 15km classical race, hindered by a waxing problem that affected his skis and made the torturous race even more difficult and painful. In the 1.5km “sprint” he placed 67th out of 71, but his performances so impressed Olympic cross country legend Bjorn Daehlie with his tenacity that the Norwegian invited him to his mountainside chalet afterwards to swap tales and celebrate.
  The main reason so few African athletes compete at the Winter Olympics is the most obvious one. There is hardly any snow. Four countries – Algeria, Morocco, South Africa and Lesotho – have established ski resorts, but most African nations have warm weather for much of the year.