It’s called The Rabbit Theory.
That’s what Akwasi Frimpong, Ghana’s first Olympic skeleton slider, calls his new helmet.
The one that he will wear in PyeongChang as the second athlete from his nation to compete at a Winter Games.
Frimpong, 31, tells an incredible story.
He said he was raised by his grandmother Minka in a one-room home with nine other children before joining his mom in the Netherlands at age 8 as an illegal immigrant and eventually moving to Utah.Frimpong’s full story is here.
Frimpong’s life – before he converted from sprinting to bobsled to skeleton – was chronicled in a 2010 Dutch documentary tilted “Theorie van het Konjin” (translation: The Rabbit Theory).
“My former sprint coach Sammy Monsels talks about the analogy of a rabbit in a cage, ready to escape from a lion,” Frimpong said in an email Monday. “I am that rabbit, and I have escaped the lions [of my past]. I am no longer being eaten by all the things around my life.”
The helmet that he will wear sliding head-first down an icy chute in South Korea in three weeks draws attention to it.
The design is of a lion’s head with mouth agape and a pair of rabbits coming out. Plus the colors of the Ghanaian flag.
