It's mid-winter in Tonga, where the temperature has plummeted to a balmy 22 degrees. But Bruno Banani is not bothered as he trains in a T-shirt and shorts in his chosen sport, in a nation mad on playing rugby and little else.
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Bruno, 27, is the South Pacific's one and only Winter Olympian. The former computer science student competed in the luge in the 2014 Sochi Games, racing down the frozen track into 32nd place – one ahead of Australia.
"Growing up here in Tonga, there is no snow and stuff," he says. "Getting to see snow was amazing."
The last time it snowed in Tonga was never. The lowest recorded temperature here is 8.7 degrees. But the small Polynesian archipelago has big plans to compete in every event in the Winter Olympics.
Leafa Mataele Wawryk – "founder, CEO and secretary-general of Tonga Luge and Royal Tonga Ski Team" – vows Tonga's tilt will be bigger than a Jamaican bobsled team. "Everyone does the Summer Olympics, so when the idea of winter sports came up, I was like 'hell yeah, why not Tonga?'."
Why not Tonga? Well, the tropical island rarely drops below 20 degrees in the shade. "But that's the best, because there's nothing more popular in the world in sports than the underdogs," she says.
She's on the main island of Tongatapu to recruit candidates to train for the 2018 games in South Korea, with the assistance of the International Luge Federation. The Kingdom of Tonga is also targeting alpine skiing, snowboarding and cross-country skiing.
The first time Bruno saw snow was in 2009, after travelling to Germany to train for the luge – where competitors lie on a sled, face up and feet first, while barrelling down an icy ditch at up to 140 kilometres per hour. The former club rugby winger from the island of Eua had tried the sport only once before, puttering down a dirt track in Tonga on a rickety sled on wheels.
"The main thing for me was to try to represent my country," he says. "I tried to do it in rugby but there were so many people playing rugby it was hard for me to get there. I watched a video about luge and was told it was really dangerous and so fast. But I love going really fast."
His journey to Sochi was marred by marketers, who concocted the story that he happened to bear the same name as a racy German underwear retailer. It later emerged that he had officially changed his name to Bruno Banani to win a sponsorship deal.
The man formerly known as Fuahea Semi now prefers to be known as simply Bruno. "It was a very hard thing for me to change my name but that's how I got all the money to do the luge," he says. "After all, it is just a name. It is what it helped me do that I felt was important."
He spends most of the year training in Germany but comes home each winter. There's no ice track in Tonga. He keeps fit by lifting weights and paddle boarding on a lagoon, to improve his balance. "In Germany it was really hard because snow was everywhere and I had to put on so many clothes all the time," he says. "But now I miss the cold when I am here in Tonga."
Also based in Germany is former Tongan marathon runner Makeleta Stephan, 36, who competed in the Nordic World Ski Championships, in Sweden, in March, only four weeks after first trying cross-country skiing.
Other members of Tonga's team also train in the United States. Hoping to join the team abroad is former competitive canoeist Falakiko Leone, 37. He has never tried cross-country skiing but says he has seen it on YouTube.
This fact and his advancing age don't trouble him. "In my heart I know I can do it," he says. "When it's freezing over there, that's when I'll miss Tonga. But I'll get used to it. It's just a matter of time and practice."
