Watching her swoosh down the tiny training slope, sometimes running gates to prepare for her slalom competitions, she looks anything but foolish. She started skiing as a kid when her parents went on a winter holiday, and was smitten.

Belgium is a country where it almost never snows and where the highest point stands at less than 2,300 feet. The closest place for real skiing is in France’s Vosges region, almost 300 miles away. Nevertheless, she made her way through the youth ranks and last season finished 35th in the slalom at the world junior championships.

Her African skiing experience is limited to two outings in the Moroccan Atlas mountains, where she gave demonstrations to local skiers.

Money is in short supply, and she sometimes has had to skip races to save money. Even now, Giroulle is negotiating with the Moroccan federation for subsidies to send Ben Mansour to the French Alps just ahead of the Olympics. The Moroccan team also will include a Paris-based male skier.

Her training now is done on the 100-meter hill at the Casablanca ski center — the name is purely coincidental, and has nothing to do with the Moroccan seaport — where the Olympic rings are painted against a white background. The black ring, symbolizing Africa, holds all of Ben Mansour’s attention.

There’s even the chance Ben Mansour will not be the first African woman to ski in an Olympics. Algeria, too, might send a woman skier to Turin. The international skiing federation said it knows of no African woman in Olympic Alpine skiing up to now.

“After all these years of having no one, somebody will be there,” Ben Mansour said. “It fills me with pride.”

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