From Rio Games to Winter Olympics, Pita Taufatofua takes on cross-country ski - Global News | Latest & Current News - Sports & Health News

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Thursday, 15 February 2018

From Rio Games to Winter Olympics, Pita Taufatofua takes on cross-country ski



Two years ago, he was marching into the Rio summer Games carrying the Tongan flag shirtless and sporting an oily torso - last week, at sub zero temperatures, he did the same in South Korea at the Winter Olympics.
His taekwondo dream ended in a 19-1 opening-round defeat in Brazil and having turned to the snow Taufatofua's ambitions are to "finish before they turn the lights off" and "don't ski into a tree".
Taufatofua only hit the snow for the first time 12 weeks ago, having endured 4am training sessions where he learned to ski on roller-skis he calls "the worst thing possible".
But he insists the one thing he will not do during Friday's race, which starts at 06:00 GMT, is quit.
"Every race, I struggle. Every race I want to quit, there hasn't been a race I haven't wanted to stop after the first lap - but I always finish a race," he told BBC Sport.
"Once you allow yourself the excuse of stopping, you will stop. It doesn't matter if you come in an hour behind the winner, because when it comes to how you translate that to life, you don't stop. And that's how I am here, because I didn't stop.
"It's the toughest sport I could find. I'm not a distance athlete, I am not a long-distance cross country skier. I trained for sprints all year and they said 'no, you're doing long distance'."

Source: BBC NEWS 

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