| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
Mexico's Lone Olympian Not What You'd Expect
 Paola Boivin - Arizona Republic
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February 27, 2010
| | Mexico's Hubertus von Hohenlohe reacts after completing the first run of the Men's giant slalom at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics in Whistler, British Columbia, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010. 2010. (AP/Sergey Ponomarev) | |
Vancouver - I'm a sucker for Olympics rags-to-riches stories. When I heard Mexico had one representative at the Winter Games, an alpine skier, I envisioned a young athlete from a small town outside Chihuahua taken under the wings of the country's Olympic federation and sent to Lake Placid to learn the art of the super G.
Boy, did I have that one wrong.
Meet Hubertus Von Hohenlohe, a 51-year-old recording artist and son of German royalty who plays golf in Scottsdale with former skiing great Franz Klammer and recently photographed a Germany Playboy calendar featuring, er, naked ski instructors.
Ay, carumba.
These Winter Games have delivered a surprising amount of representation from warm-weather nations. Bermuda contributed a cross-country skier and the Cayman Islands a giant-slalom specialist.
Von Hohenlohe is no novice. These are his fifth Games and he has enjoyed them as much as any, evident Tuesday by how he shook his backside after completing his giant-slalom run and flaunting his shiny skinsuit, silkscreened with a gun and holster on the side and a sombrero on back.
OK, so he was 78th. Hey, Bode Miller didn't even finish the race.
"This one was probably most satisfying of all," he said Friday, "because I'm doing it at my high age against all odds."
Who is this man?
For the record Von Hohenlohe was born in Mexico because his father, Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe, was overseeing a Volkswagen plant there. The prince and princess - his mother is Princess Ira Furstenberg - relocated to Spain when he was 4 and he later attended schools in Austria, where he learned to ski.
His family has a home in Cabo San Lucas, which he has visited several times over the past few years.
And that, dear neighbors, is about as Mexican as he gets.
Unless you count that he loves to golf three hours north of the border in Scottsdale and has taken lessons from highly regarded instructor Peter Kostis. He is a 5 handicap, he said, and plays with clubs he purchased from Ping's golf factory.
Some are offended by his tenuous connection to Mexico - he participated in the opening ceremony for the first time, holding the country's flag - but they shouldn't be. He's not circumventing any rules. His federation requires only that he be a citizen of its country, and he is.
"Some people are upset by him, but I also think he's inspiring some people in Mexico to have goals, too," said Carlos Pruneda, the country's Chef de Mission. "We are working on plans to send four or five Olympians to Sochi (Russia) for the 2014 Games."
Mexico has had representation at seven Winter Olympics since the Games' inception in 1924, beginning with a bobsled team in 1928. Von Hohenlohe has appeared in five since 1984, and in two of those he was the nation's only entry.
In 2006, he was excluded from the Turin Games by Mexico's federation because he was the only one from the country who qualified.
"They thought they were going to have 10 but then it was just me, and they didn't want to send out one guy with a German name," he said.
It didn't matter this year. In fact, the country seems to finally be embracing its representative, who founded the country's ski federation in 1981.
Mexico's federation hopes he can inspire other Olympians, in his own flamboyant way. The country now has 29 skating rinks, Pruneda said, and is beginning to understand what it takes to get athletes ready for the Winter Games.
Von Hohenlohe also hopes that U.S. skier Sarah Schleper, who competed in the ladies downhill here, might help Mexico's cause. While surfing in Cabo San Lucas in 2006, Schleper fell in love with a resident there, Federico de Gaxiola. Any connection to Mexico could be valuable, Von Hohenlohe said.
Nothing might be as valuable as the publicity the colorful figure generates.
Seriously, this is the guy who said, after his giant-slalom run, "The main thing is I looked good."
This probably will be his last Games, but it's not as if he won't have anything else to do. He will return to his photography projects which recently included, yes, a calendar for German Playboy featuring naked ski instructors.
"It was a lot fun," he said.
He also has photographed acting brothers Luke and Owen Wilson for Puma Golf.
The Austrian-based musician has released several albums and can be heard on European pop radio. He became interested in art and photography because of a friendship with Andy Warhol, who has said he loved the idea of mingling with royalty.
Van Hohenlohe is royalty. And a lot of other things, too.
Reach Boivin at paola.boivin(at)arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8956. Follow her on Twitter at Twitter.com/PaolaBoivin.
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