From Morocco, an Alpine skier: making it to the Games is his gold

At the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, there were six athletes from five nations from the continent of Africa. Of these, five athletes from five nations were Olympic Solidarity Scholarship holders. Morocco sent precisely one athlete, Alpine ski racer Yassine Aouich. He was one of the 429 Olympic Solidarity Scholarship holders for Beijing 2022. But the mere fact of holding an Olympic Scholarship from Olympic Solidarity does not qualify you for the Games even if it provides precious training and competition support.

Yassine Aouich is no Olympic tourist. He is a genuine ski racer. All the same, he understood he had zero chance of winning a medal against what he affectionately calls “the big guys.” His dream: make it to the Games.

Which he did. Incredibly. He maybe had 25 days of winter training and a nerve-wracking deadline to try to rack up qualifying points. He had no coach. Money? Not much. His skis? Bought himself. His wife, an English teacher, and young son? Back home in Morocco, rooting, while he traipsed around Bosnia, Montenegro and Liechtenstein trying to pick up points. Fortunately, the Olympic Scholarship has contributed to alleviate the difficulties and to support him in his qualification process. Did he get Covid along the way? You bet.

“If life didn’t kick you in the face, there would be no story,” he says now. “Come on.”

Any Olympic Games, Winter or Summer, offer a stage for the drama of human drive and perseverance. And, of course, as the founder of the modern Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, said, the essence of the Games is not the winning but the taking part. As he also said, the important thing is not the triumph but the struggle.

You want struggle? We give you Yassine Aouich.

Over the past 40-plus years, Morocco has sent a combined total of roughly two dozen alpine racers to the Winter Games.

Aouich grew up in the Atlas Mountains, skiing. But ski racing is still so relatively unknown there that the Morocco World News felt compelled, in a story published a couple weeks before the Beijing Games, to explain that Alpine racing was “the sport of sliding down snow-covered slopes on skis with fixed-heels binding.”

For nearly a dozen years, Aouich chased his dream. He raced in Spain, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, Greece and South Africa. He made the World Championships. Did he win a medal? As he likes to say:“The minimum, it’s like 250 days per season ...come on. This sport. It’s really expensive!”

But a dream will not be denied. It cannot be. At a giant slalom race in Malbun, Liechtenstein, in December 2021, he finished seventh. With enough points for Beijing, he said, “I prayed. And I cried. I’m a believer.”

Majd Chekroun, the Morocco Olympic Committee’s international relations director, said the NOC was “delighted” to have helped Aouich get to Beijing through the Olympic Solidarity Scholarship programme – the eighth time the nation has taken part in the Winter Olympics – while also stressing that Aouich, himself, showed “great motivation” to earn the needed points to get there.

Aouich carried the Moroccan flag in the Opening Ceremony. A few days later came giant slalom race time. It was foggy and snowing. In the start gate, “I was shaking.” He pushed out and made five or six gates and then slid out. “I didn’t want to finish slowly,” he said. “I wanted to push. This is ski racing. It’s about time. You go fast or you go home.”

No shame. U.S. star Mikaela Shiffrin slid out at the 2022 Games. So did Yassine Aouich. So what?

At the bottom of the hill, he had a moment of peace.