| Fox News |
February
14, 2002
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| Title: Mt. Everest and the Winter Olympics have been united | ||
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| Jayaram
Khadka, a 29-year-old skier from Nepal, finished next to last in the men's
10-kilometer classical cross country Thursday at Soldier Hollow and then
proudly proclaimed: "I bring Mt. Everest to the Olympics - for a country
with the highest peaks and half covered in snow, it's taken a long time."
Khadka, who lives in England with his adopted father and trained in France for three months before the Olympics, is the first athlete from Nepal to compete in the Winter Games. His time was 18 minutes and 13 seconds behind the leader, Johann Muehlegg of Spain. He didn't advance to the second leg of the race, a 10K freestyle that only features 60 top finishers from the classical, but he loved the experience. "The spirit in the (athlete's) village and between the skiers here is what the Olympics is about," said Khadka, who hugged last-place Isaac Menyoli, another Olympic rookie from Cameroon, at the finish line. Was he disappointed with the result? "Absolutely not. Give me four years and I might compete with the leaders," he said. Khadka comes from tough, durable stock, familiar with ice, snow and the extremes of winter. His natural father was an expert mountain guide whose efforts to save an injured British climber in the Himalayas many years ago helped Khadka to the Olympics. Khadka's is one of the most dramatic biographies at these Olympics. He was raised by the man who was rescued from a climbing accident by Khadka's father, a police officer. Instead of accepting payment for his good deed, the officer asked the Englishman to care for his son if needed. Years later, Richard Morley learned that his friend had died of a heart attack and flew to Nepal to keep his promise. He looked for three months until finding Khadka working in a kitchen. The boy instantly recognized the man from a picture his father left. Morley recounted their first meeting. "When I found him, his first words were: 'Are you the man who has come to rescue me?'." The pair returned to England, but it took a seven-year immigration battle that went to the High Court in Britain and cost Morley more than dlrs 350,000 for Khadka to remain in England. Khadka risked permanent deportation if he left England during that time, so his first experience of snow was in Scotland. Morley taught Khadka to ski and he liked it so much he began practicing to make the Olympics in downhill and slalom. But after a knee injury last year, his only alternative in the pursuit of his Olympic dream was to take up cross country. So he did, on Nov. 17 last year he put on cross-country skis for the first time and started practicing "I came back from the injury but I didn't have time to qualify in Alpine. Qualifying for cross country was later, so that was my only option," Khadka said. Khadka has been practicing with the French national squad, which has adopted him, he says, as their "mascot." He gets plenty of technical advice and help from the French and says it's because of them that he qualified for Salt Lake. He said his ambition was to foster the development of skiing in his native Nepal so that other athletes have a chance of making the Olympics. "Nepal is a poor country and most people don't know skiing. If I can raise the profile, maybe in 20 years we'll have a lot of people skiing in the Himalayas." Nepal, the home of the Himalayas, is packed with expert climbers and famed for its sherpas - trackers and guides. But without western basics like electricity in many regions of the rugged Asian nation and no such things as ski lifts, very few people have taken to skiing. "Just being here is an achievement," said Khadka, who saw the Olympics for the first time on TV when he moved to Britain in 1992. Khadka is one of 11 athletes who are the sole representatives of their nation at these Olympics. Menyoli is another and Kenya's Philip Boit, who made his Olympic debut four years ago at Nagano, is another. |