Gangwon 2024: Meet the history makers of the Tunisia bobsleigh team - the first from their nation at a Winter Olympic event
Jonathan Lourimi, Sophie Ghorbal, and Beya Mokrani will be the first Tunisians at a Winter Olympics or Winter Youth Games. Discover how the PyeongChang 2018 Legacy Programme helped them blaze a new trail.
Bobsleigh
Tunisia is often known for its sunny weather, golden beaches, and Sahara desert sands.
It's not somewhere you might expect to find a bobsleigh team.
But all that is about to change. The North African nation will compete in the sport for the first time at a Winter Olympic or Winter Youth Games event, when they take to the icy slopes of the Alpensia Olympic Sliding Center at Gangwon 2024. .
Bobsledders Jonathan Lourimi, Sophie Ghorbal, and Beya Mokrani are Tunisia's Youth Olympic Games (YOG) history makers.
“It's incredible to be the first Tunisian to compete at a Winter Olympics. And we're very honoured to be here,” 15-year-old Sophie Ghorbal told Olympics.com ahead of the event.
“This is the biggest thing I've done in my life so far,” Jonathan Lourimi, 17, added.
As pioneers for their country, they also face a lot of attention and expectation. “I'm a little bit stressed, but also proud. I hope I do my best at the competition here,” said Beya Mokrani, who is 15 years old.
“My family didn’t even know, what bobsleigh is”
The trio got to know about bobsleigh through the **PyeongChang 2018 Legacy Programme. ** It invited young athletes from countries without access to winter sports facilities to try some of the disciplines found at the Winter Olympics.
For their loved ones, it was a learning process too.
“In the beginning my family didn't even know what bobsleigh is. So, I had to explain them and they were like: ‘Bobsleigh is easy. I can do that’. But when I then tried to qualify, they said keep going, and they were really proud when it happened,” Ghorbal said.
“No one knows bobsleigh and winter sport in Tunisia. I introduced the sport and the culture to our country. It's great to have new opportunities for a country that doesn't have any snow, and that is in North Africa.”
Eventually, Lourimi, Ghorbal, and Mokrani were selected, and have since received support from the programme to train in the Republic of Korea.
“Everything started with the PyeongChang Legacy Foundation that organized the New Horizons Program,” Ghorbal said. “I'm really thankful for the foundation. Without them, it wouldn't be possible to qualify for the Youth Olympics,” Lourimi explained.
Their bobsleigh journey hit a high with qualification for Gangwon 2024. Mokrani and Ghorbal in women's monobob, Lourimi in the men's discipline.
Sophie Ghorbel, Beya Mokrani and Jonathan Lourimi of Tunisia are stretching after training.
“In Tunisia you need to explain to the coaches how it works”
The Tunisia squad are doing most of their training at home. For Lourimi, home is in Stockholm, Sweden, where he and his family with Tunisian roots are living.
Ghorbal and Mokrani train together with a track and field team in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia.
But it is not always easy to deal with coaches that have never seen a bobsleigh in their life.
“We've got to explain [to] our coaches how it works, and then they need to help you. It's a little bit difficult to trust them in the process, because they don't even know the sport. So, we're working on that,“ Ghorbal said.
“In Tunisia, we can only do the physical part, where we do like weight training, sprint training, etcetera. We don't have a lot of infrastructure for winter sports, but we try to deal with what we have and we're doing our best.”
Lourimi lives in Sweden, which has a proud winter sports tradition, but has no bobsleigh track in the country. Just like his Tunisian teammates, he can only focus on the physical part when he is not at competitions.
The Youth Olympic experience at Gangwon 2024 and hopes for the future
All three will be competing in monobob at Gangwon 2024, which is the only bobsleigh discipline to feature at the event.
And just the experience of being at the Youth Olympic Games is special for the teenagers.
“I'm very excited and very happy, because I get to meet new people and make a lot of memories,” Mokrani said.
Now that they are here, the hope is to get more than just a nice experience. Especially for Lourimi, who has impressed this season finishing in the top ten six times in the OMEGA Youth Series and set the fastest time in Friday's training in Gangwon.
“I want to be at the top. It's a competition, and I always want to win. That's the mentality I'm going to go with,” Lourimi told us. “It’s an amazing sport. And of course, I want to qualify for the real Olympics.”
“We hope that our country can continue to do bobsleigh, because it's a very expensive sport, and we hope we are not the last Tunisians to be at a Winter Olympics.” Mokrani concluded.
The women’s monobob competition with Ghorbal and Mokrani participating will take place on 22 January, while Lourimi is in action on 23 January in the men’s monobob.