ATHLETES TO WARM HEARTS

Sporting superstars will descend on the Gold Coast for the Commonwealth Games but as the Winter Olympics is proving yet again, it’s lesser-known faces that often light up such events. DWAYNE GRANT reports.

FORGET the gold medal certainties and famous faces. Forget the athletes who were destined to soar from the moment they could walk.

If this week’s Winter Olympic Games in South Korea has reminded us of anything, it’s that a Ugandan netballer or Jamaican rugby player will touch our souls come April just as much as hometown girl Sally Pearson.

“It is no surprise that many of the human stories of commitment, determination and passion (at the Winter Olympics) are Commonwealth stories,” Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) chief executive David Grevemberg said of Nigerian bobsleighers, Ghanaian skeleton athletes and a barechested, flag-waving cross-country skier from Tonga.

“While the lead-up to any Games can be dominated by logistics, politics and a lot of background noise, it is the athletes and teams and the inspiring stories of how and why they choose to wear their national flag on the sporting stage which truly captures the imagination.”

Fifteen Commonwealth nations and territories, fuelled by more than 350 athletes, are competing in the freezing temperatures

of PyeongChang. And while Canada’s ice hockey superstars will have Canucks on the edge of their seats, it’s the likes of Akwasi Frimpong that has Mr Grevemberg mesmerised.

“(He’s) the first-ever Ghanaian skeleton athlete … racing down an icy mountain at 90 miles per hour, telling CNN ‘I can motivate kids in Ghana to chase their dreams’,” the CGF boss wrote in a passionate column this week.

“(There’s) the inspiring women of the Nigerian bobsleigh team making sporting history … and the former youth worker and Rio 2016 star Pita Taufatofua who turned from taekwondo to the hardest sport he can find on the snowless Pacific island of Tonga – cross-country skiing.

“Gold Coast 2018, starting in … 50 days’ time, will be no different.”

For proof, like no further than Canada’s beach volleyballers.

As a blisteringly cold winter sweeps across North America – thermometers in the Canadian capital of Ottawa have been sitting in the minus-20s for days – the Maple Leaf army will have plenty to cheer as the sun bears down on the Commonwealth Games’ inaugural beach volleyball court.

“The Jamaicans will field their firstever team in the ever-increasingly popu-