Tropical nations at the Winter Olympics

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Although traditionally associated with northern nations, the Winter Olympics has also had a number of teams from nations that are primarily or solely in the tropics. In many cases the climate, or in cases like Ethiopia or Madagascar the relative poverty, of these nations makes them not associated with Winter sports and few to no Winter Olympic medals have been won by such nations. Despite, or perhaps because of, that their entries are a subject of comment or "human interest" stories during the games.[1][2][3]

The earliest example of a tropical nation in the games might be Mexico. Although much of Mexico is at a latitude above the Tropic of Cancer enough of its population lives in the tropics to be considered "tropical" for the purposes of this article. Mexico made its Winter debut at the 1928 Winter Olympics [4]. At a much later date Puerto Rico sent a participant in the luge competition of the 1984 games. By far, however, the best known tropical team is the Jamaican Bobsled Team, which trains at Evanston, Wyoming (USA), and is the inspiration behind the 1993 motion picture Cool Runnings. Jamaica was eventually followed by teams from Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, the Netherlands Antilles and Brazil, which also competed in snowboarding in 2006.