Hubertus von Hohenlohe Skier For Mexico

No one’s Olympic uniform is more confounding than Hubertus von Hohenlohe’s. “It sounds strange,” von Hohenlohe admits while relaxing in an Olympic Village coffee shop before the Mexican flag-raising event. “But it’s not all that bad.” The skier’s grandmother is half-Mexican, and von Hohenlohe, who is a Vienna-based singer and photographer when he’s not speeding down the slopes, was born in Mexico City while his father was running a Volkswagen plant there. “We always wanted to have one member of the family [who was] Mexican,” he says. “So they chose that I was going to be born in Mexico. That was the idea.”

This will be his fifth Olympics for Mexico, but only the first since 1994. Although he qualified for the Torino Olympics in 2006, the Mexican Olympic Committee refused to send a one-man team. More eager for exposure this year, Mexico decided to support his next-to-nothing shot at a medal in the slalom and giant slalom races.