Winter Olympics........In Milton Keynes!
Had an unusual job towards the end of last month. It was a PR job for Paddy Power (and I did meet Paddy Power, he's a real person!!!) photographing a skier that they are sponsoring in the run up to the Winter Olympics which start today. Nothing unusual about that, I'm sure Paddy Power (the company) sponsor a lot of different people and events. 
What made this a bit different was the fact that the downhill slalom skier comes from Ghana, Africa! Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, or the Snow Leopard as he's now know, is the first Ghanaian sports person to qualify for the winter Olympics. Now, in case your wondering, Ghana's average minimum temperature in winter is 20 with a record high of 38!!!! Surprisingly, it never snows. The first time Kwame actually saw snow was when he stepped of a plane at Heathrow ten years ago. He fell in love with the sport four years later when he started working at the Milton Keynes Snow Dome, where we were shooting the pictures. The day was also used as a media day, with national and international TV turning out for the latest sport oddity. During the press conference, Kwame was asked about being tarred 
with the same brush as Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican Bobsled team but he was quick to point out that he had, like all skiers in the Olympics, qualified for the Winter Games by meeting standards set by the International Ski Federation within the past year. He also said that some times he is so cold that he thinks he's getting frost bite! One last question from the floor, has he ever seen a real leopard? "Only in a zoo....." I'll be looking out for him in the next couple of weeks.
What made this a bit different was the fact that the downhill slalom skier comes from Ghana, Africa! Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, or the Snow Leopard as he's now know, is the first Ghanaian sports person to qualify for the winter Olympics. Now, in case your wondering, Ghana's average minimum temperature in winter is 20 with a record high of 38!!!! Surprisingly, it never snows. The first time Kwame actually saw snow was when he stepped of a plane at Heathrow ten years ago. He fell in love with the sport four years later when he started working at the Milton Keynes Snow Dome, where we were shooting the pictures. The day was also used as a media day, with national and international TV turning out for the latest sport oddity. During the press conference, Kwame was asked about being tarred 
with the same brush as Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican Bobsled team but he was quick to point out that he had, like all skiers in the Olympics,
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