BBC - Lizzie Greenwood-Hughes

Kwame - the epitome of the dream?

2010-02-24T22:43:29Z

I always wanted to go to an Olympics. Not as a spectator but as an athlete. Sadly I was always a mile off being good enough at my chosen sport of hockey to make it.

That was mainly down to a lack of talent but it was also likely to have been affected by the way I was nurtured as a sporting wannabee, or not nurtured as the case may be. I didn't start playing until I was 12, didn't join a club team until I was in my late teens and was part of quite a cliquey county set-up.

So all these years later (I'm not bitter) I have settled for working at the Games as a journalist which, let's face it, isn't a bad lot. But there are some people who just don't accept they might not quite have the right training/background/money/facilities and somehow they do make it.

One of those sporting miracles is the 35-year-old Ghanaian slalom skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, aka the Snow Leopard.

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He is here competing for his country at the Winter Olympics, the pinnacle of sporting success, yet he's only been skiiing on and off for seven years.

He took it up because he was given free access to the Milton Keynes indoor ski slope where he worked as a receptionist. Nkrumah-Acheampong has a 'can do' attitude.

Born in Glasgow but raised in the snow-free country of Ghana in West Africa, Nkrumah-Acheampong moved back to Britain in his twenties, and at that point had never put on a pair of skis.

Now if that was you, would you choose to be an international ski racer? 99.9% of the universe would just have a bit of a go and then probably use skiiing as a gentle leisure activity. Not Kwame.

He practised and practised until he was good enough to think about taking it up as a sport professionally and now, a few years later, he's at the Olympics competing in the slalom. You can read a bit more about his background and how he qualified on Anna Thompson's earlier blog.

He's not exactly going to break any records, and he's more than likely going to finish in the bottom one or two, but he is here. His ambition for the race is just not to come last.

I spent half an hour on the slopes here in Whistler with Nkrumah-Acheampong. He wasn't particularly keen to be wearing his skis as he hates his boots, saying they are really uncomfortable (like all ski racing boots), but we wanted more shots of him skiiing so reluctantly he agreed.

I found him incredibly focused. Clearly he takes his skiing very seriously - Eddie the Eagle he ain't. He flatly refused to be considered an 'underdog', saying: "I prefer to call myself a middle dog."

He also had quite strong opions on the subject of Eddie the Eagle, saying the British messed up what might have been a legacy from the former Great Britain ski jumper's notorious fame which came in the wake of the last Winter Olympics to be held in Canada - in Calgary in 1988.

"After all the Eddie the Eagle publicity Britain should have a proper ski jump programme, but you don't. Why not?"

He may have a point - but I wanted to know what Nkrumah-Acheampong thought his own legacy would be. What did he want to achieve?

He has already set up a ski programme in Ghana with a grass slope for kids to try out and he has links with several charities. I think extending that legacy in Ghana is the most important thing for him here.

It certainly has not been an easy journey for him. Yes, here at the Olympics he's a bit of a celebrity (his manager told me he was mobbed in Vancouver!) but it was a different story during the season.

He had very little money to fund his racing and frequently stayed in his car overnight rather than pay for a hotel, sometimes when the temperatures were minus 15. He also relies on sponsors to make ends meet.

The epitome of the Olympic dream? I certainly hope he doesn't come last! Good luck Kwame...

Golden glow for Williams' parents

2010-02-20T07:38:50Z

How does it feel to have a daughter win an Olympic gold? Well I have a pretty good idea how Ian and Jan Williams - the mum and dad of Britain's new Olympic Champion Amy Williams are feeling tonight after chatting to them throughout the skeleton competition.

It's fair to say 'very proud' is their foremost emotion but I was so impressed by their calmness.

If it had been me I would have been blubbing like a baby and would have probably started an ice invasion in a bid to give her a huge hug. Mr and Mrs Williams on the other hand remained the perfect picture of British restrain.

]]> It's not a criticism at all. Please don't take it that way. It's more an indication of how stupidly excitable I am!
Amy Williams parents congratulate her on winning gold Photograph: PA

They were clearly overjoyed with grins from ear to ear from the moment Amy finished her first run. I think they are just supremely confident in their daughter's abilities. Yesterday her dad said several times "Amy loves the track here". Well she clearly does, nailing every single run of this competition.

I guess even though Britain has a great record in the skeleton, I always like to remain pessimistic about any medal chances.

But it's a fact, we are the most successful nation in skeleton at the Olympics, having won a medal at every games with a skeleton competition - bronze 1928, bronze 1948, bronze 2002, silver 2006 and now Gold in 2010.

It was lovely to hear from her dad that Amy was inspired to take up skeleton after watching Alex Coomber win bronze in 2002. How many young girls will now be inspired by her fabulous display of sporting achievement?

With her gold medal and stunning looks she is sure to become a big star at home and her life will change forever. I hope she's got an agent!

Amy's mum was desperate to speak to her daughter but families rarely have accreditation at an Olympics so she couldn't get anywhere near her. So we phoned our producer at the mixed zone where the athletes are interviewed and he passed the phone to Amy so her mum could speak to her. I felt like Cilla Black.

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Lizzie watches Amy Williams' gold medal run from the stands in Whistler (UK users only)

As she told Amy she loved her and wanted to hug her I welled up, her mum was by then on the verge of tears and it was all very emotional.

There were loads of British fans watching which added to the atmosphere. Every Brit for miles seemed to come out of the Whistler woodwork to support Team GB. Respect has to go to the four men who were topless with A,M,Y,! drawn on their chests. I was wearing two coats and I was cold, they must have been absolutely freezing.

I felt so sorry for Adam, Kristan and Shelley. Like Amy, they have been utter professionals throughout the madness of the Olympics. I'd like to thank them all for their help to us the BBC.

It must be so hard to spend four years training for something and then not achieve your goal. But that's the skeleton over for these games.

Next up at the sliding centre it's the bobsleigh. Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke have a good chance in the women's. It would be so great to win another medal. Go girls and fingers crossed.

The day I was Estelle's Canadian girl

2010-02-17T20:07:09Z

I used to be a presenter and reporter for Newsround on BBC children's TV and amongst all the amazing and crazy things I did whilst working there, one of the coolest was rapping with Estelle.

Now, I can't rap or even sing but about four years ago I stood on stage in front of hundreds of school children and did a duet with her. It is still one of things I am most proud of.

]]> Estelle's biggest hit is American Boy. Photograph: Getty

So when I was asked if I wanted to interview her before she did a gig out here in Whistler I jumped at the chance. She's just a really nice lady who also happens to be a brilliant singer/songwriter and get this - she remembered me!

She wasn't just being nice, she genuinely remembered what happened. I'm not saying it was a big moment in her life, and in fact I had to prompt her quite a lot to jog her memory but then she said "oh yeah, it was at a school right? I was teaching kids to rap?"

Luckily she didn't elaborate on the fact it was probably quite irritating having some TV type muscling in but she did remember me.

So fast forward to February 2010 and here we are again, this time in an art gallery in Whistler. Estelle is now an international superstar with a proper showbiz entourage and a full-on American accent (she's lived in New York for three years.)

Despite her success, I was relieved to find she's still friendly and self-effacing. So often stars get a bit full of themselves as soon as they find major fame. Not it seems Estelle.

Of course these days she's way too big to allow random BBC presenters to rap with her - let alone get her to ski (she's only been on the slopes once in her life and didn't particularly enjoy it) but she was still happy to go along with my wacky questions and even sang my Canadian lyric version of American Boy.

We talked about how she still raps with a London accent ("it's like a switch, as soon as I rap I go into my old voice.") and she told me about the new album she's spent most of the last two years making.

It's taken her a while and by the sound of things she's had a few man problems during that time. When I interviewed her it was Valentine's Day and at her gig later that evening she told the crowd her boyfriend had cheated on her and that she'd made a YouTube clip with her singing a ditty about how she didn't like him very much while all her mates were in the background joining in!

I was really surprised by her honesty. It was the sort of thing any ordinary girl might want to do for a bit of fun and once again, refreshingly normal.

Next week Usher is playing the Whistler Medal Plaza - I wonder if I'll get to meet him too? Anyway, before you say it, yes this is the Winter Olympics and I am here to cover the sport. My next film is a lovely one about the Rudman/Bromley British skeleton couple and their lovely family. It will be shown on TV on Wednesday (17 February) and you can also watch it here.

Tragedy of 'terrifying' Whistler track

2010-02-14T21:46:26Z

Now that two days have passed since Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili's death, I finally feel I can blog about the whole tragic experience.

Some TV networks out here are still showing the incident. I can't imagine why anyone would want to see it and I wish they'd stop. It's something I never want to have to witness again.

At the time of the accident I'd been making a feature for BBC Sport on the sliding track - about how fast and difficult it was - so I'd already been talking at length to sliders and watching the lugers training.

Without exception, every athlete and coach told me it was the most difficult, fastest track they'd ever seen. Many of them, including the world number one Canadian skeleton slider Melissa Hollingsworth, went as far as calling it "dangerous".

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But this is the Olympics and, as well as being a bit worried about the track, most of the athletes were relishing the challenge. Melissa actually attributed part of her recent success to the fact she'd had so many crashes on the track. She told me it had made her as good as she is.

Well, Melissa is one of the lucky ones who has had plenty of access to the track. The Canadians have been busy training on it since it opened last season. The rest of the world has had to make do with one World Cup event, a week's training and their three days of pre-event runs at the Olympics.

As part of my feature I'd filmed a series of pieces to camera up at the Whistler Sliding Centre. The area is known to be home to bears and we'd all seen Canadian TV pictures of a bear almost climbing onto the ice last year, so I'd mentioned something along the lines of "the athletes don't need to be afraid of the wild animals roaming around the area - this track is all they need to worry about."

Those words clearly seem crass now. But again, the track's extreme level of difficulty was in everyone's minds long before the tragedy.

The organisers had changed it before the Games to make it safer. One corner in particular - corner 13, nicknamed "50-50" due to the odds of crashing there - had been altered. It was where Britain's sole luger here, AJ Rosen, dislocated his hip last September, wrecking his season.

But nothing had slowed the record speeds lugers were clocking up. The vertical drop and gradient of the track meant they were almost hitting 100mph. The BBC's commentator here, Colin Bryce, told me: "Those speeds make corners that would be fine on any other track absolutely terrifying here."

I spoke to a senior member of the organising team for the sliding events the day before Kumaritashvili died and asked, "Is it safe?"

"Yes," was his categoric reply. I also asked, "Has anyone ever fallen out of a track, because there doesn't seem much to keep them in here?"

Again, I was told this would never happen. "Gravity would stop anyone ever leaving the track." How wrong we all were.

Safety improvements were made to the track after Kumaritashvili's death

Of course it's not for me to comment on whether all of the above contributed to the death of Kumaritashvili. That's down to the International Luge Federation, Vanoc and the police. Their investigation has concluded it was the athlete's fault.

The President of Georgia has subsequently disputed that conclusion, saying "no sports mistake should result in death." I'm inclined to agree with him.

It always feels harsh when someone has died and is then blamed for their own death. It's like when a plane or helicopter comes down and the coroner says "pilot error". Clearly the reason for a death needs to be established but I wish they could find some other way of describing it.

Having looked at the ice where Kumaritashvili crashed you can see his line was far too high coming out of the final corner - about three feet too high. But I've just read it was actually the fourth time he'd come off his sled at that point.

Now the ice has been cut back to soften the final corner. Boarding has been put up where he left the track and the men are now starting from the womens' start (although that has only cut their speeds by between five and 10mph).

Meanwhile, the whole of Georgia is in mourning. They plan to build a new luge track in the country to replace the one destroyed by war. It will be named after Kumaritashvili.

It's been said this will probably be the last of the big, fast sliding tracks to be built for an Olympics. Maybe we've reached the limit of human possibilities on a sled and ice. All we can do is just pray a tragedy like this will never happen again.

Welcome to hair-raising Whistler

2010-02-11T20:17:44Z

Wow, what a place Whistler is! I've always wanted to come here, and for me this is the where the real Winter Olympics are (not that I've been to Vancouver yet!)

Whistler - famous for its great snow, great pistes and friendly people and so far living up to that reputation - is the home of the alpine sports.

These sports are at the heart of the history of the games. Skiing and sliding are my favourite events and I am privileged to be here covering them for the BBC.

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The place is buzzing with athletes, their connections and the world's media. The restaurants, bars, cafes and accomodation all seem full to the brim. There aren't many non-Olympic accredited tourists yet but I'm sure that will all change when the events start.

I am making a feature for BBC Sport on the Whistler sliding track - and last night we went to the sliding centre to film a few bits to camera as the lugers were training. It's the first time I've ever actually been to a sliding track - and it's just a bit special.

The track is described as the fastest and most technically challenging in the world .

When you see it on the TV you know sliding sports are fast and exciting but to stand less than three feet from the ice where someone is hurtling past you at 100 miles per hour is an incredible sight. The hairs on my arms stood on end (under my thick layer of warm coats!) and I was simply mesmerised by the spectacle.

Earlier I was given a tour of the Olympic village by Team GB's deputy chef de mission, Sir Clive Woodward. He was absolutely charming and didn't seem to mind us filming everything from three different angles.

Clive (he said to just call him Clive) has been the driving force behind improving the sports science for the winter athletes here. But it's not just about the ice baths and hi-tech gym equipment he's installed, which are clearly vital to the team's performance.

He's also made sure everyone has the basic stuff like comfortable beds, ear plugs and somewhere to relax. His theory seems to be "make lots of things a little better and it all adds up to make a big difference."

I guess that's advice we can all use for everything in life. Let's hope his improvements add up to a big medal tally for Team GB this year.