I should, had everything gone according to plan, currently be writing this from a luxury igloo, a couple of decent reindeer steaks on the grill, and a shiny gold medal hanging round my neck. I?d always wanted to visit Canada, particularly after seeing the excellent ?South Park? documentary on the country, and vague intention became firm plan two years ago, after a most successful introduction to the joys of alpine skiing, under the careful guidance of the great Argentinean skier, the late Pablo Solsona .

A quick recap, lest you not be amongst the dozen or so regular readers this column boasts: after a fortnight on the slopes of Les Gets with two deranged South American instructors, it became patently clear that I was born to ski, and only the surfeit of slopes in rural Zimbabwe had prevented this sparkling talent from being discovered earlier. The plan, then, was to polish up some of the rough edges (without compromising my personal style, an energised and fearless Alberto Tomba approach to the slopes), and lead Zimbabwe?s charge on the Winter Olympics, currently playing out in Vancouver.

But the crushing injustices of the Olympic institution scuppered my own ?Cool Runnings? aspirations, a letter from Pablo assuring the IOC that I?d be ?a most entertaining addition to the Games?, coupled with several photographs of me looking very composed on the piste ? and in rather fetching white and lime ski gear, clearly the sign of an accomplished skier ? not enough to get me into Vancouver 2010. These Olympics, history will judge, will have been all the poorer without me cruising through Whistler at high speed; as a result, I?ve been reduced to following the action from Canada at odd hours of the day on SuperSport, and marvelling at the events that have somehow found their way to Olympic status. Particularly as most of them appear to be rather creative attempts at suicide.

My mate Kevin McCallum, chief sportswriter at The Star, was planning on competing, until he realised that the sport was ?luge?, and not ?lunge?, a sport women across the East Rand would acknowledge McCallum?s gold medal potential in. And luckily McCallum realised his mistake in time: the firm right hand of a sturdy Boksburg lass to the cheek is far less damaging than being thrown from what appear to be one of Kobus Weise?s ice skates, hurtling down an ice tunnel at improbable speed. The sleds top 140 kilometres an hour, with forces of over 5G (effectively those experienced by...); unsurprisingly, it?s an Australian (George Robertson in 1883, for some truly useless information) who was partly responsible for introducing this choreographed lunacy to organised sport.

The ski jumping falls into a similar realm of activity for the clinically insane, the aim being to scream down a slope as fast as humanly possible, before flinging yourself into the air for a hundred and fifty metres, and then gliding into the snow with the sort of graceful landing SAA Airlink pilots will find most unfamiliar. Landing up in hospital seems the more likely option, but the experts manage it beautifully, and watching the Austrian team (originally dubbed the ?eagles?) claim gold made for mesmerising television, albeit of the sort I have no desire to try and replicate.

Both skeleton and bobsleigh garner the same reaction, skeleton in particular inspiring sheer terror ? building up speed before plunging head first down a chute made of ice (not noted for its holding qualities) places riding in a minibus taxi into calm perspective. And then there?s the curling, that bizarre combination of funeral urn, ice rink and brooms that?s almost hypnotic in its oddity. Sweden, lest you missed it, performed strongly as underdogs in the early rounds, and may yet make the semifinals, but world champions China have crashed out, leaving all of us in the world of curling astonished. Don?t miss Norway?s charge to the finals; no doubt you already have your PVR programmed.

But the event that had my genuine attention was the one I had been destined to triumph in: the men?s giant slalom. Racing athletically down a slope littered with flags is exactly what I?d spent two weeks in Les Gets practicing; my pace might have been somewhat more modest, and the flags fellow skiers or small tress, but the principle holds firm. A little more practice (my IOC application had included a request for funding to spend consecutive European winters at Val d?Isere), and glory would have been mine: winning run, gold medal presentation, and an open top parade through Harare in a Peogeot 504 station wagon cabriolet.

Instead, the unlikely hero of the 2010 Olympics has been marooned in Gauteng this past fortnight, and earlier in the week, the thoroughly undeserving Swiss skier Janko Carlo shamelessly claimed the gold medal that should, by rights, have been mine, with dastardly Norwegians Kjetil Jansrud and Aksel Lund Svindal joining him on a podium that should have rung to the crackling cassette recording of the Zimbabwean national anthem. The international media?s been strangely quiet about my absence, which lends credence to my suspicions of conspiracy; it?ll all come out, however, and 2014 will see me make amends in Baghdad, where the IOC tell me they?re hosting the next Winter Olympics, and which they?ve encouraged me to visit as soon as possible.

And so I?ll resume training early next year, with a skiing trip scheduled (lack of IOC funding notwithstanding) for February; and in the immediate future I?ll be watching the rest of the Vancouver Games. Give it a try, if you haven?t already ? the disciplines may stray towards the ludicrous, and the African continent might have given us little to celebrate, but all that will change in four years, and I?ll need you to be up to speed with your alpine sports so as to knowledgeably cheer me to a long overdue victory. Janko Carlo, I have you firmly in my sights.

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