Thailand's Answer To The Jamaican Bobsled Team

[sriracha john]

Great story I think and I wish him all the best!.... GO THAILAND!!

Trailblazer

ThaiDay 1 February 2006

Cross-country skier Prawat Nagvajara doesn’t expect to win a gold in the Winter Olympics, but that’s not why he’s there

Twenty-three seconds. That’s what separated Prawat “Air” Nagvajara from his hero, the Kenyan Philip Boit. If only he’d been a little bit faster.

Four seconds. That’s all that separated Prawat from the other African, Cameroonian Isaac Menyoli.

If only he’d been faster, Prawat could have leapfrogged both Africans and grabbed 66th place in the 1.5-kilometer cross-country sprint at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics.

What would that mean? Not qualification for the final. Only the top 16 earn that.

Prawat would have to shave more than a minute off his time to reach those heights. That would be like someone who runs the 100-meter dash in a human 14 seconds suddenly finishing it in a world-class 10.

In other words: not going to happen.

So what would it mean for Prawat to beat out the Africans in a race across the snow? Bragging rights, for starters. For the skiers who represent countries that don’t even have snow, it’s not about winning anyway. It’s all about personal and national pride.

That’s why they competed in the 1.5-kilometer race in the first place. They made a plea to race officials to allow them to participate in a second event and, following the spirit of the Olympic Games, the officials agreed.

Who could refuse them?

“By rule, it’s one skier, one event, but they [the officials] can just stick you in the race,” 48-year-old Prawat told me in a telephone interview from the United States. “We told them ‘we came all this way.’”

In 2002, “all that way” was a long way from Thailand, but not that far for Prawat, who is a professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University and trains in the mountains of New England.

But this month, he will go far, if not fast. The Winter Olympics open February 10 in Turin, Italy, and Prawat will again be Thailand’s lone representative when he competes in the 15-kilometer classic.

What’s his goal this year? “It depends on the conditions and it depends on the course, but 50 minutes is the ultimate goal. That would be really good; under an hour would be okay.”

And what about the winners? They’ll be clocking in around half an hour, twice as fast.

But Prawat could not care less. He’ll just be happy to be there, rubbing shoulders and wax with the top racers in the world.

“These guys are my heroes. To me, to be in the same race with these people is unbelievable. My skier friends say I’m lucky. They say ‘don’t complain about expenses. I’d pay three times.’”

No matter what happens, it’s likely to go better than the Salt Lake Games, where Prawat almost didn’t get to race. His representative missed an important meeting before the event, so Prawat wasn’t on the official start list. In they end, race officials let him compete.

He was, after all, the first Thai to qualify in the 100-plus-year history of the Winter Games.

But it didn’t go so well. In the grueling 30-kilometer race, Prawat’s official event, he didn’t get to the grueling part. He was out in the second lap.

Of course, Prawat was still a winner. The lap that counts isn’t on skis anyway.

When the Bangkok native, on foot, enters the Turin Olmypic Stadium for the Parade of Nations, carrying the Thai flag, he’ll do so alone, once again the single representative of Thailand.

Last time around, he was featured on US television and in newspapers around the world. This time around, it’s a different story. He’s not a novelty act. He’s just another athlete – but one who has proven, through continued dedication, that his last appearance wasn’t just for the hel_l of it.

Prawat, who’s been skiing “seriously” for six years and says he didn’t even know how to ski properly when he started, trains 15 hours a week.

He runs 10 miles four times a week, works out on roller skis, hits the free weights and occasionally even sees some snow.

“I was going to do two races in New Hampshire. They were canceled, as there wasn’t any snow. Luckily, Saturday night, we had three inches,” Prawat tells me.

For someone who didn’t even see snow until he was 18, when he went to Northeastern University in Boston, he sounds like a regular ski bum. The outdoors enthusiast soon took to cross-country skiing and more than two decades later decided to take it to the Olympic level, after he saw the Kenyan Boit compete in Nagano’s 1998 Winter Games.

To get back to the Olympics and do better this time, Prawat has spent essentially all his free time – that is, outside raising two young kids and grading papers – on the sport.

More importantly, he wants to be an example – not of doing the impossible, but of opening doors for the country to have a future in the Winter Games.

Will Thailand ever win a medal in the Winter Olympics?

For Prawat, the country’s future hopes are best placed in short-track speed skating. “All we need are some youngsters who want to go fast,” he says. With that goal in mind, he’s hoping to raise funds and start a program to groom the next generation of Winter Olympians.

He also sees himself as an example to fellow skiers.

“How can you keep the sport going if you don’t include regular people in the races,” says Prawat.

Finally, this year he hopes to make a bit of a fashion statement. Boathouse Sport is designing his official jacket. It’ll be black, Gore-tex, with a hood, the Thai Olympic Committee emblem and an elephant on the right chest.

He wants the jacket to be black in order to honor the tsunami victims. “The Nordic countries lost a lot of people in Thailand.”

[Wes Turner]

I say good on the man. I remember the Jamacan bobslay team when they were in Calgary - they made a movie about it called Cool Runners with that fat guy who died John Candy who was also a Canadian but everyione thinks he is from US.

[steveromagnino]

I say good on the man. I remember the Jamacan bobslay team when they were in Calgary - they made a movie about it called Cool Runners with that fat guy who died John Candy who was also a Canadian but everyione thinks he is from US.

Yep; prior to that there was Eddy the Eagle from England whose efforts resulted in introducing minimum standards.

Like NZ, there will be some olympians, but they will be foreign born raised in Italy/Norway/USA/Japan etc then use the Thai citizenship rather than their other nationality to get to go to the olympics rather than perhaps being unable to get into the national team. Like Claudia Riegler of NZ or Marc Giradelli of Luxemburg I think it was. Both were not really from that country, but had citizenship AFAIK.

I know of a person contemplating a run for olympic qualification on this basis in the sport of snowboard racing GS for 2010 or 2014; it is not impossible to reach qualification standard, but the cost of going is high and the dedication needed in any sport is pretty full on.