Tropical nations at the Winter Olympics

Several tropical nations have participated in the Winter Olympics despite not having the climate for winter sports. Partly because of that, their entries are a subject of human interest stories during the Games.

No tropical nation has ever won a Winter Olympic medal.

The first warm-weather, but not tropical, nation participating in the Winter Olympics was Mexico. Much of Mexico is at a latitude north of the Tropic of Cancer, and most of the country has a subtropical highland or semi-arid climate, so it is not exclusively a tropical nation. Nonetheless, Mexico made its Winter Olympic debut at the 1928 Winter Olympics with a five-man bobsleigh team that finished eleventh of twenty-three entrants. Mexico did not return again to the Winter Games until the 1984 Winter Olympics.

The first truly tropical nation to compete in the Winter Olympic Games is the Philippines, who sent two alpine skiers to the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan.Ben Nanasca placed 42nd in giant slalom skiing (out of 73 entrants), and Juan Cipriano did not finish. In slalom skiing, neither skier was able to finish. Costa Rica became the second tropical nation to participate at the Winter Games, in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, where Arturo Kinch also competed in alpine skiing events. Kinch would continue to compete for Costa Rica at three more Winter Games, including the 2006 Winter Olympics at age 49. There he finished 96th in the 15 km cross-country skiing event, ahead of only Prawat Nagvajara of Thailand, another tropical nation.

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