Bahamian Korath Wright Prepares for Winter Olympics

When you think of the Bahamas, palm trees, steel drums, warm sun, ocean waves, and perhaps Kalik beer come to mind. The Bahamas are a group, or archipelago, of 700 islands which cover more than 100,000 miles. The population is more than 305,000. In 1492 Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas on San Salvador. Today the Bahamas are a major tourist destination, and are home to approximately 14.5% of the worlds coral which draws divers from around the globe. If you were to think about sports in the Bahamas what would they be? Sailing, swimming, cricket, soccer, scuba diving, golf, tennis, and sunbathing, That is if you consider sunbathing a sport. What about snowboarding? No? Well Korath Wright hopes to change that.

Wright is a Bahamian who aspires to represent the Bahamas in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Wright was born on the island of Nassau, he moved to Canada and began snowboarding at the age of ten. The twenty-two year old is currently training with the Canadian, Dutch, and United Kingdom Olympic teams. He finished third at a World Cup event in Whistler in 2006, and started the 2006/2007 ranked thirteenth in the world.

In April of 2009 Olympic trials will be held in New Zealand. Wright hopes to make the cut.

The 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver. The Olympic games last for seventeen days, February 12-28, with the Paralympic games lasting ten days, March 12-21, 2010. It is estimated that 5,500 Olympic game athletes and officials will be present from more than eighty countries. The paralympics are projecting 1,350 athletes and officials from over forty countries. Over 3 billion are expected to watch the Olympics on television.

Olympic snowboarding made it's debut in 1998 and consist of six events; men's and women's half-pipe, men's and women's parallel giant slalom, and men's and women's snowboard cross. At the 2006 Winter Games in Torino Italy, the United States led the snowboarding events with seven total medals, three gold, three silver, and one bronze. Sweden was second with three gold and one silver. Germany and Slovakia each received silver medals, and Austria had a bronze.

Wright's quest will no doubt draw comparisons to another Caribean islands winter dreams. In 1988 Jamaica fielded it's first bobsled team. The team consisted of Jamican sprinters , coached by two former American bobsledders. They became the underdog favorites of the XVth Winter Olympic Games in Calgary. Their journey inspired the 1993 motion picture "Cool Runnings", which stared John Candy as their down on his luck American coach.

Will Korath Wright's Olympic dream inspire a major motion picture? Tune in to the 2010 Vancouver Games and find out.