Forget for a moment that the man dubbed "the Snow Leopard" was born in Scotland but wants to represent Ghana, the land of his ancestry, in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Forget, also, that as a skier, his experience is limited to three years on an indoor slope at something called Xscape Snowzone in Milton Keynes near London, where he works as a receptionist.

What needs to be remembered about Nkrumah-Acheampong, 30, is that he has only recently been introduced to mountains, which are likely to be much in evidence in Turin in 2006.

"I'm trying to get my head around mountains," Nkrumah-Acheampong told England's Guardian newspaper. "They are so different from the narrow slope in the indoor center. The mountains are huge and high, and there are trees and shadows and lumps of ice and everything.

"And there are so many different directions to go in, you can't decide. You can go left, right or straight on. In Milton Keynes, you just ski down."

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