Olympic sensation up the creek
The Tongan athlete who first hit the headlines at the Rio Olympics has again garnered attention with his latest antics.
Pita Taufatofua, who led his team into the Olympic Stadium in 2016 wearing a traditional Ta’ovala with his torso covered in oil, is attempting to become the first sportsperson to compete at three consecutive Olympic Games in three unrelated sports.
He represented his country in taekwondo in Rio in 2016 and then switched his hand to cross country skiing for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. Now he wants to compete in Tokyo next year in a canoe sprint event.
But while Taufatofua showed at last month’s world championships in Hungary just how badly out of his depth he is at his latest sport, he said he’s confident he’ll still achieve his goal.
Taufatofua, who admitted he was having problems simply staying in his kayak in training, couldn’t get his canoe lined up properly at the start. He circled around but still wasn’t straight when the field was released and was left in the wake of the other competitors.
He finished the heat of the men’s K1 200 metre event in last place in 58.19 seconds – 24.22 seconds behind heat winner Strahinja Stefanovic, of Serbia, and with the slowest time of 53 competitors in the heats.
‘‘The wind took me at the start, and I lost it from the beginning,’’ Taufatofua told the official International Canoeing Federation website.
‘‘I guess it had to happen that way, it’s probably the worst 200 metres I’ve done in my life, even in training. But I can’t control everything. When I did get straight, I just tried to go for it and it just didn’t work.’’
Taufatofua teamed up with countryman Malakai Ahokava in the K2 200 but the pair failed to finish their heat.
Not being particularly capable at a sport hasn’t stopped the 35-year-old previously.
In Rio, he was beaten in his first round taekwondo contest by Iran’s Sajjad Mardani on points gap – Mardani was ahead 16-1, the biggest winning margin in the first round of the men’s +80kg class.
Two years later, he was 114th out of 116 finishers in the men’s 15km free cross-country skiing competition at the Winter Olympics, 23 minutes behind the winning time of 33 minutes 43 seconds.
Last year, Stuff revealed the International Ski Federation (FIS) was reviewing its qualification process for crosscountry skiing for the 2022 Games in Beijing due to concerns over ‘‘results inconsistencies’’ of several athletes. Cesar Baena, a member of the Venezuelan nordic ski team, accused Taufatofua of cheating the system.
Not surprisingly, Taufatofua’s results in Hungary failed to qualify him for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but he wasn’t dispirited and will likely have another attempt at the Oceania qualifiers in February.
‘‘I’ll be at the Olympics. February, that’s six months,’’ said Taufatofua, a Unicef ambassador who works with homelessness charities and raises awareness of global warming.
It’s understood he’s also contemplating trying to qualify again in taekwondo and possibly looking at competing in both codes in Tokyo.
‘‘I don’t feel so much pressure, I deal quite well with criticism and stuff. Everyone’s underestimated me my whole life, so I’ve made two Olympics, I’ll make three.’’