ERIALPINE96

I won’t have to be alone during the Opening Ceremonies. My support team, my parents, and other members of our delegation will be walking along with me.

There isn’t much of a ski community in Eritrea, but I hope through my participation at the Olympics I can inspire Eritreans in Europe and North America to take up skiing.

In Africa there are a few countries with athletes that compete in Cross-Country, Ski Cross and Alpine. I’m familiar with some of them and actually have trained/competed with a few of them.

Unfortunately, I do not train in my home country. It’s only snowed once in Eritrea and the climate can’t really sustain a ski hill. It would be nice in the future if they build a dry slope.

I speak English and French. I also can understand and speak Tigrinya, but its EXTREMELY rusty.

At the moment, I'm not 100% sure if I will continue with my CS degree and I might switch my major. If I do continue with the CS program, I want to work on some cybersecurity and be a private contractor. I've talked to some people in that field, and they advised me not to pursue it considering the development of AI's and how they might phase out these jobs. Realistically though after I graduate, I will probably be working on as a system analyst or some web development job.

My home resort is currently Panorama based in Invermere, BC. During the off season, I train in Calgary at the Winsport facilities and also at Peak Power at SAIT. Occasionally, I will go down to the southern hemisphere in NZ for a month and in the fall before the beginning of our season here, I will travel to Austria to train on a glacier.

I first got into skiing when I was 3 years old through my sister. Her girl guide group went to the local hill in Fort McMurray (We were living there at the time) and she really enjoyed it! Through her friends that were with the local Fort McMurray club, she managed to convince my parents to sign my brother and I up for some lessons and later into a racing program with the club. I actually hated skiing and wanted to play hockey like all my classmates, but I was forced into the program by my folks. I only started enjoying it more when my dad’s job relocated our family to Calgary and I was exposed to the Rocky Mountains.