Tropical nations at the Winter Olympics

Several tropical nations have participated in the Winter Olympics despite not having the climate for winter sports. Partly because of that, their entries are a subject of human interest stories during the Games.^[1][2][3]

The first warm-weather, but not fully tropical, nation participating in the Winter Olympics was Mexico. Much of Mexico is at a latitude north of the Tropic of Cancer, and most of the country has a subtropical highland or semi-arid climate, so it is not exclusively a tropical nation. Nonetheless, Mexico made its Winter Olympic debut at the 1928 Winter Olympics^[4] with a five-man bobsleigh team that finished eleventh of twenty-three entrants.^[5] Mexico did not return again to the Winter Games until the 1984 Winter Olympics.^[6]

The first truly tropical nation to compete in the Winter Olympic Games was the Philippines, who sent two alpine skiers to the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan.^[7] Ben Nanasca placed 42nd in giant slalom skiing (out of 73 entrants), and Juan Cipriano did not finish. In slalom skiing, neither skier was able to finish. Costa Rica became the second tropical nation to participate at the Winter Games, in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York,^[8] where Arturo Kinch also competed in alpine skiing events. Kinch would continue to compete for Costa Rica at three more Winter Games, including the 2006 Winter Olympics at age 49. There he finished 96th in the 15 km cross-country skiing event, ahead of only Prawat Nagvajara of Thailand, another tropical nation.^[3][9]

The 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada attracted many tropical nations, including Costa Rica, Fiji, Guam, Guatemala, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands.^[10] The Jamaica bobsleigh team became a fan favorite at these Games^[11] and were later the inspiration of the 1993 motion picture Cool Runnings. In the 1994 Winter Olympics six years later, the Jamaican four-man sled placed a creditable fourteenth, ahead of the United States and Russia, while Jamaican-born bobsledder Lascelles Brown won silver for Canada in 2006.

The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy marked the Winter Games debut of Ethiopia^[2] and Madagascar.^[12] The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada saw the debut of the Cayman Islands, Colombia, Peru,^[13] and Ghana.^[14] The 2014 Winter Olympics saw the debut of Dominica, Paraguay, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, and Zimbabwe. The 2018 Winter Olympics saw the debut of Ecuador, Eritrea, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Singapore. The 2022 Winter Olympics saw the debut of Haiti. The 2026 Winter Olympics saw the debut of Benin and Guinea-Bissau.

On 14 February 2026, alpine skier Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, born in Norway to a Brazilian mother and Norwegian father, became the first Latin American, South American and Brazilian as well as the first athlete representing any tropical nation to win a medal in the Winter Olympics with a gold in the men's giant slalom. Pinheiro Braathen is a citizen of Brazil and Norway and previously competed for Norway, but then switched to Brazil.^[15][16][17]