Ghana’s sole representative in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, Korea is set to lose his personal trainer by March 15, 2019, if he is unable to meet his financial obligations.

According to him, he has been paying the trainer from his own resources for a while now but cannot continue due to inadequate funds available to maintain the coach.

He has therefore made a passionate appeal to the Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC), the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS) and the Government of Ghana (GoG) to assist him.

“I’m losing my coach on March 15, 2019 due to the lack of funding. I had to take a personal loan to pay him for this season. I hope the Ghana Olympic Committee, the Ministry of Youth and Sports Ghana and the National Sports Authority can support.

“I am improving now in the sport of skeleton and cannot allow this to be a setback because there is the need for me to continue this improvement towards Beijing 2022 so they should help me keep him,” he expressed.

Frimpong who was ranked 99th last year but managed to improve his ranking in the beginning of the year to 68th position but has also gone a step further and is currently ranked 67th.

According to him, the IBSF skeleton world championship is taking place on March 7-8, 2019 in Whistler, Canada, and even though he has qualified, the goal was to get extra training till March 9 in Park City, Utah five days a week and focus on basics and fundamentals.

Besides that there is no budget to travel and compete at the world championships, therefore, losing his coach in addition to this will be a big blow to his sporting career.

Akwasi Frimpong is a Dutch-Ghanaian sprinter, bobsledder, and skeleton athlete who has won four bronze, four silver, and eight gold medals in various national and international sports events.

Frimpong, who was raised in Ghana, moved to the Netherlands at the age of eight and started running when he was 15. In 2003, he became the Dutch National Junior Champion in the 200 meter sprints, which earned him the nickname ‘GoldenSprint.’

He switched nationalities to Ghana and qualified for the 2018 Olympics in skeleton by route of continental representation, being the only athlete representing the African continent in skeleton.