Tonga’s Rio heart-throb ditches taekwondo for endurance skiing
After causing a storm as an Olympic flag-bearer, Pita Taufatofua is on a remarkable new journey
No account of the Rio Olympics’ opening ceremony could be complete without the Tongan flag-bearer, who strode into the Maracana slathered in enough baby oil to glue up a Highland cow. Even Andy Murray, performing the same duty for Britain, felt upstaged by this muscle-bound figure dressed only in a ta’ovala skirt and a shell necklace, while swooning female admirers scrambled to book the next flight to Nuku’alofa.
Yes, Pita Taufatofua had the mien of a man who looked in the mirror of a morning and was not wholly displeased with what he saw. Far be it from anyone to presume, though, that he was content with just five minutes of fame. For no sooner did he represent Tonga in taekwondo in 2016 than he decided to have a tilt at this year’s Winter Olympics here – as a cross-country skier.
Quite apart from Polynesia’s conspicuous absence of snowcapped mountains proving a hindrance, Taufatofua also had a void of alpine sports experience for which he compensated by strapping two wooden planks to his legs and running up sandhills. Now, remarkably, he is here in South Korea, having qualified through a last-ditch race after all six previous attempts failed.
“After Rio, I needed a new challenge,” he said. “Could I do a new sport, the hardest I could think of, in a year?” It turned out that he could, by the most slender of margins. Having shuttled from one sub-arctic venue to the next, staying only in cheap hostels and subsisting on a diet of tuna and pasta, he fulfilled his quest with one final push in the snowy wastes of northern Iceland.
“We got there and a big snowstorm had blocked all the roads. It took us three days of trying to get through. The closest I had come to succeeding was within 30 points. But this time, I
blew it out of the water. It was the best snow race I have ever done.”
Tonga’s Winter Olympic heritage does not run deep. The Pacific archipelago’s only previous representative was Fuahea Semi, who finished 32nd in men’s luge at Sochi 2014 as part of a marketing stunt with a German underwear brand, having changed his name to Bruno Banani. Taufatofua insists, for all the rush of photo shoot offers that came his way post-rio, that his motives are more Corinthian. “There was movie stuff, modelling stuff, different sponsorship contracts. I didn’t realise how big a thing it would be for people, but my passion is pushing myself.”
Certainly, he is suffering for his new-found art. “Every time I ski, I feel like I die a little inside,” he explained. “I still haven’t had a race where I felt completely happy, in terms of no pain.”
Besides learning his first semblance of technique on roller-skis and asking for money via a crowdfunding site, Taufatofua has also had to trim down his celebrated physique to under 12st to improve his speed and endurance on the slopes. He lacks the money for anything other than a single pair of skis, but remains undaunted. Such dedication, he argues, is borne from his family background. One of seven, his father an agricultural worker and his mother a nurse, he found that the loss of a sister when he was a child intensified his commitment to take every chance.
A restless soul, he has still not ruled out learning a third different sport in time for the next summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020. In taekwondo two years ago, he was thrashed 16-1 in his opening bout.
Taufatofua is, at least, being more pragmatic in his choice of dress for Friday night’s opening ceremony here, where the temperatures have dipped to -20C. “I want still to be alive for my race,” he said, with a smile. “It’s going to be freezing, so I will be keeping nice and warm.”