Usual suspects dominate Olympic medal count

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Bolivia, one of South America’s poorest countries, also abounds with snowy Andean peaks, yet skiing has never taken root, the Olympics are absent from TV, and soccer reports fill newspaper sports sections.

“I don’t know when they’re happening,” Jose Luis Apaza of La Paz, Bolivia, said of the Winter Games. “Soccer, volleyball, basketball — that’s what attract people.”

Ice skating rinks are proliferating gradually in warm-weather countries. Brazil, Thailand, India and South Africa belong to the International Skating Union, which requires members to have good rinks, but — without top home-based coaches — they aren’t seen as imminent medal threats.

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“Unlike summer sports, it’s difficult to improvise the facilities for winter sports — it becomes very, very expensive,” said Sam Ramsamy, an IOC member from South Africa. “We have to rely on enthusiasts who go to northern hemisphere to train.”

South Africa’s three-athlete team in Turin is the biggest from Africa; its best showing was 21st place in skeleton by Tyler Botha. Senegal’s first Olympic skier, Leyti Seck, finished second to last in the men’s super-G.

Despite the modest results, these and other warm-country athletes met recently stiffened qualification criteria and generally have performed competently — not evoking past embarrassments such as a Moroccan skier being lapped in the 1992 giant slalom or a Mexican cross-country racer finishing nearly an hour behind the next-slowest skier at Calgary in 1988.

“We don’t want that artificial participation — we want dignity,” Miro said. “The total number of countries in itself is not success. We want the athletes who deserve to compete.”

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