That really oily guy from the Olympics is going to compete in the Winter Games
Buy your stock in coconut oil because Pita Taufatofua is returning to the Olympics.
The Tongan flag holder became a beloved meme during the opening ceremony at the 2016 Rio Olympics when he appeared in all his glistening glory. Well, now Taufatofua is officially heading to the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea in a sport he barely knows: cross-country skiing.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Taufatofua officially qualified in Iceland on Saturday for the games. All this despite the fact that he comes from Tonga, a small Polynesian country that never sees snow.
According to the Journal, Taufatofua had never skied before last year, but he was committed to going to the Winter Games, even crowdfunding his efforts to get there on Go Fund Me.
"My goal is to motivate and inspire people to reach for the best within them and I do that through setting seemingly "impossible' goals and then moving mountains to achieve them. And that is how a coconut from the Pacific found himself thousands of miles from home swimming around on cross-country skis in a constant state of hypothermia," he wrote on the crowdfunding page.
Taufatofua has raised $15,823 of his $30,000 goal at the time of writing. According to the page, 20 percent of all funds raised will be donated back to Royal Tonga Ski Federation.
