Akwasi Frimpong is a skeleton athlete who lives in the Netherlands.
At 31, Akwasi is the first male West-African skeleton athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics.
The skeleton event is a single-athlete sport in which the competitor has to lie face down on a board and race down a track at high speed.
Akwasi is the son of Esther Amoako, a popular Ghanaian gospel musician.
He started athletics at 15 as a sprinter. Frimpong later became the Dutch National Junior Champion and won four bronze, four silver and eight gold medals at several national and international sporting events.
In 2012, he was part of the Dutch pre-Olympic sprint team, but a tendon injury ruled him out of the Games in London.
Akwasi also failed to make it to the 2014 Olympics and decided to go back to school in the U.S. But after advice from one of his coaches, he decided to take up the skeleton event.
He announced yesterday that he will be part of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Already, he has won medals in several competitions such as the 2017 IBSF World Championships, the 2013 Americans Cup, and the 2012 Gold GoldenSprint Challenge Invitational.
Off the track, Frimpong’s efforts are being heavily supported by Cocoa From Ghana.
He recently got married to Erica Shields-Frimpong.
Frimpong will represent Ghana in the PyeongChang Winter Games, held from Feb. 9-25. Frimpong will begin competition in the male skeleton events set to start on Feb. 15.
