Costa Rican Placed Second-to-Last in Olympics Race
Far away from the glare of the NBC cameras, as a blizzard slammed the foot of Mount Albergain, cross-country skier Prawat Nagvajara, the Drexel University professor from Thailand, and Arturo Kinch of Costa Rica engaged in a private Olympic battle that most sports fans will never see or hear about.

It was the Olympics in its purest form: two middle-age men representing their native countries and spending their own money to get there.

When it was all over, when Nagvajara and Kinch crossed the finish line some 29 minutes behind winner Andrus Veerpalu of Estonia, the only question was who finished last and who finished second to last in the field of 97.

"I fell maybe five times during the race, and I broke my pole, but I wasn't last," said Nagvajara, a 47-year-old computer-engineering professor. "I passed the Costa Rican guy. I was so happy to finish."

A few minutes later, Kinch, now a Denver resident who will turn 50 in April, offered a different story. He had a rough start, falling out of his skis at the starting line, but recovered. "The Thai skier did pass me, but then I passed him twice when he crashed on the downhill part," Kinch said. "I guess he didn't see me. I finished second to last, not last."

Turns out Kinch, a five-time Olympian, was right. He crossed in 1 hour, 6 minutes and 50 seconds and Nagvajara in 1:07.15. Down there with them, at the bottom of the pack, were other one-man delegations: Philip Boit of Kenya, Dachhiri Sherpa of Nepal and Danny Silva of Portugal.

Nagvajara eventually came to terms with the order of the finish, telling The Inquirer in a telephone interview yesterday morning: "I finished dead last.

"It was a difficult race," Nagvajara said. "I know this sounds like an excuse, but my waxing was totally wrong. It was tough and difficult to finish like that."

For these men, who have become good friends and share wax secrets, their times were irrelevant. What mattered most was that they persevered and finished.

Kinch's dream goes back four decades. The seventh of 11 children of a missionary couple in Costa Rica, he was a sports nut. He earned a scholarship to Rockmount College in Colorado (now Colorado Christian University), where he played soccer and basketball. To keep fit in the winter, he took up skiing and eventually made the college ski team.

In 1978, he came up with a plan to ski for Costa Rica in the 1980 Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. With the blessing of the Costa Rican Olympic Committee, Kinch formed a ski federation and competed in downhill at Lake Placid. Four years later in Sarajevo, he raced in the giant slalom as well as the 15K and 30K cross-country. At Calgary in 1988, he again competed in Alpine and cross-country.