For Ethiopian, the ski's the limit

Hopes to be in Olympics

By Samara Kalk Derby

December 5, 2005

As a boy growing up in Ethiopia, Robel Teklemariam was always drawn to the mountains. So it was only natural that when he moved to Lake Placid, N.Y., at age 12 he fell in love with skiing.

Now, Teklemariam is poised to become the first Ethiopian ski racer to ever compete in the Olympics.

"I have a shot. The people I know say that I have a shot," Teklemariam, 31, said by phone Sunday after a race in Colorado that put him slightly closer to qualifying for the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, beginning Feb. 10.

Teklemariam, who has family in Madison and spent last summer working at Fontana Sports Specialties, started planing his Olympic bid three years ago.

It was a complicated effort that included his founding of the Ethiopian National Ski Federation as well as the Ethiopian Ski Team, which so far is an exclusive club of one.

"I don't really think I have a chance of winning medals," Teklemariam said with a laugh. "I'm a realistic person. Is this Olympics about winning medals or about representing my country and showing there are high caliber athletes from nations not necessarily known for skiing?"

As people travel the world and it becomes smaller, more experiences are shared, Teklemariam said. "It's the world we live in now."

Teklemariam's younger brother Yoseph is vice-chair of the Ethiopian National Ski Federation.

"A lot of people reference the Jamaican bobsled team," Yoseph said about his brother's Olympic bid, noting that a lot of support has come from Madison.

John Hutchinson of Fontana has supplied equipment and cross country ski wax that can cost Teklemariam as much as $1,000 a season.

A small fundraiser at Madison's Slipper Club the night before Thanksgiving raised a couple of hundred dollars, and Teklemariam is also raising money on the federation's Web site.

Yoseph works at WKOW-TV as a video and audio engineer. And until recently, their mother, Yeshareg Demisse, was co-owner of the Ethiopian restaurant Yirgalem on Monroe Street.

The family is originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and moved to New York in 1983, when Teklemariam's mother took a job at the United Nations.

For junior high, Teklemariam went to a small boarding school in Lake Placid, N.Y., the site of the 1980 Winter Olympics. It is there that he learned to cross country and downhill ski.

At one of his first ski races someone offhandedly remarked that he should represent Ethiopia in the Olympics one day.

"I laughed it off at the time but it stayed in my mind," Teklemariam said.

In high school in Colorado, Teklemariam focused on cross-country skiing and was recruited by the University of New Hampshire, a top tier school for skiing. There, he ranked in the top 30 ski racers in the country.

After college, Teklemariam took a long break from ski racing. He went back to Colorado and worked for eight years teaching alpine skiing and snowboarding at Club Med in Copper Mountain and Crested Butte.

Then three years ago, a woman he was dating encouraged him to go after his dormant Olympic dream.

Now, if his next few races go as planned and if he remains uninjured, Teklemariam hopes to compete in both alpine and Nordic events, rare for any serious ski racer.

After the U.S. Cross Country Championships at Soldier Hollow, Utah, the first week in January, Teklemariam plans to come to Madison for the Capitol Square Sprints Jan. 14.

"For me it's about representing my country, representing my nation," said Teklemariam, who holds an Ethiopian passport but considers himself an Ethiopian-American.

"Do I really think I am going to win a medal? No. But I'm going to go there as if I were and race that way."