Why Is a German Prince Skiing For Mexico?

[heli]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1963932,00.html

Why Is a German Prince Skiing For Mexico?
By Sean Gregory / Vancouver

Last Thursday afternoon, during the ceremonial raising of the national flags at the Vancouver Olympic village, the Mexican national anthem blared over the loudspeaker. Mexico's lone Winter Olympian, alpine skier Hubertus von Hohenlohe, stood at attention, right arm crossing his chest. That's right — Hubertus von Hohenlohe. If you're thinking that name doesn't sound very Mexican, you'd be absolutely correct. In fact, he's a descendant of German royalty, the son of Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe and Princess Ira Fürstenberg. Can't get more Mexican than that.

After Olympic officials raised the flags for Mexico, Azerbaijan, Denmark and Great Britain, actress Sandra Oh — a Canadian and star of Grey's Anatomy who was emceeing the event — invited the athletes onto the stage for a festive dance. "We are celebrating you, the youth of the world!" screamed the overcaffeinated star. One problem, Sandra, von Hohenlohe of Mexico is no youth — he turned 51 two weeks ago.

With every Winter Olympics, fans eat up the weird stories about the athletes from warm-weather countries that would seem to have no business participating in their chosen sports. And although the Jamaican bobsledders failed to qualify for the Olympics this time, the Vancouver Games offer plenty of intriguing tales. In addition to the middle-aged German skier prince representing Mexico, there's a speedskater from the Cayman Islands, cross-country skiers from Bermuda, Ethiopia and Ghana, and a few other oddballs who marched in Friday's opening ceremony. Even Jamaica still got to raise its flag: a freestyle skier from the country earned a spot at the Olympics.

Sure, these stories are charming. Too often, however, the connection between the athletes and the countries they represent is tenuous at best. Though athletes are required to be citizens of the countries they're competing for, that definition of "citizen" varies widely from one country to the next. It's a problem that has spread across a spectrum of sports. A Pittsburgh-bred point guard, who speaks little Russian, suited up for Russia's basketball team during the Beijing Olympics. African distance runners have competed for Bahrain, and American baseball players for Italy. But the tie between country and competitor is especially loose in the Winter Games, since warm-weather places like Mexico and Jamaica can't even claim a speck of snow or ice. Errol Kerr, the Jamaican ski cross athlete, grew up in the Lake Tahoe area. Ruben Gonzalez, a luger with Argentina's team, lives in Katy, Texas; he moved to the U.S. when he was six...

[HeresyLives]

1. And the problem here is......?

[Historic NY]

2. you don't have to have a birth certificate to compete............

for a country you not even affilitated with..:rofl:

[HeresyLives]

3. LOL no just citizenship.

And that's becoming more fluid all the time. :)

[farmout rightarm]

5. Which is why the whole exercise is nothing but a money grabbing enterprise for

the operators. I suspect most of the athletes have no clue they're just "lions in the arena" as it were.
Or maybe they do, and don't care. :shrug:

[HeresyLives]

7. Who pissed in YOUR corn flakes?

Your life would be much pleasanter if you stopped seeing everything as a class struggle, and just enjoyed them for what they are.

[farmout rightarm]

9. Okay, I get it...you're Bill Frist and you're doing a diagnosis by remote control

from a post an a message board. How cool is that? HAHA...hey thanks for the giggle.\
:D\
:D
\

[HeresyLives]

15. Who's Bill Frist?

:crazy:

[BrightKnight]

20. a quack - n/t

[farmout rightarm]

4. Well, BFD. However, you've brought up something that has pissed me off for many years.

The olympics bring testeronic levels of nationalism that often transcend the putative rationale for the competition...which is...uh, remind me, again.........?

The whole thing is a farrago of bullshit and serves no purpose in the 21st Century. I think that's what you meant, and you're right.

[HeresyLives]

6. Better the Olympics than war, mon ami.

[farmout rightarm]

10. But you brought up the point about fluid citizenship...and then you complain to me for

observing that the whole nationalistic aspect of the "games" is absurd? Okay, now I am officially confused.
:silly:

[HeresyLives]

14. Better nations compete without weapons than with them.

But citizenship in nations is becoming a very fluid thing, so eventually it won't matter.

[Monk06]

8. Well Napolean III put the Austrian, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Austria

in charge of Mexico and German settlement in Mexico
goes back to pre independence days in Texas.

Where do you think Mexican brewed Pilsner beer
came from? Sol and Pacifica are German beers.
Good ones too.

[demosincebirth]

11. "Mexico, no snow or ice?" Check out Popocatepetl (18000ft) And theres many more.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

12. Why are 3 siblings from NJ ice dancing for Japan (2 of them) and Georgia?

http://www.japantoday.com/category/sports/view/all-3-reed-siblings-go-to-olympics-in-ice-dancingd

And why did a Japanese pair skater just skate for Russia?

[Xipe Totec]

13. Why Is a Polish Princess one of Mexico's Most revered writers?

Answer: Because unlike certain other countries, Mexico still welcomes and grants citizenship to people who want to come to Mexico and make it their home.


Poniatowska was born in Paris to Prince Jean Evremont Poniatowski Sperry and Paula Amor-Escandón. Her father was a Polish nobleman who was a descendant of the brother of King Stanislaus II of Poland, the last king of Poland. The Poniatowski brothers of King Stanislaus were granted Princely titles as relatives to the King. She also is descendant of King Louis XV of France through her paternal great-grandmother Louis Le Hon. Her mother, Paulette Amor e Iturbe, was a Mexican of mixed French ancestry, and also a descendant of Mexican nobility.

Poniatowska fled from France with her mother during the Second World War. The family settled in Mexico City, where the young Elena and her sister Kitzia learned Spanish from an Indian servant. In 1943,<1> Elena was sent to study to the United States. She returned to Mexico in 1953 and started her career as a journalist working for the newspaper Excélsior.

She is best known for her 1971 work La noche de Tlatelolco (published in English as Massacre in Mexico), in which she relates her interviews with survivors and families of those who died in the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Poniatowska

[SutaUvaca]

16. Sprecken zie Espanol? nt

[Xipe Totec]

17. Habla usted pendejol? nt

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

18. Si-ja!

:hi:

[nickinSTL]

19. I see you gloss over the fact that Hubertus von H-L

was BORN in Mexico.

He apparently (according to wikipedia) holds dual citizenship in Mexico and Austria (where he mostly grew up) - but "...founded the Mexican Ski Federation in 1981 and first skied for Mexico at a Winter Olympics at the 1984 games in Sarajevo."

There are athletes competing for nations who have less of a tie to their countries than Prince Hubertus.

[Artie Bucco]

21. The writer deserves to be fired for piss poor research.

http://mexfiles.net/2010/02/10/mexicos-winter-olympics-team/

From the Mex Files.


Team captain, mascot, flag-bearer and pivot man on the alpine ski team (ok… the whole danged Mexican contingent) is Prinz Hubertus zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Ok, he’s got a weird name for a Mexican jock — unlike, say Cuauhémoc Blanco or Zudikey Rodríguez or Alfredo Xeque. “Prinz Hubertus” may not roll off the tongue as easily, but he’s as Mexican as they come.



The Hohenlohe’s weren’t all that different from other Germans who fled the Nazis for a secure new life in Mexico. Ok, so they left a castle behind, but c’mon, they still were expected to fit in and get a job and get on with their lives. Like immigrant families in Mexico before and since, the Hohenlowes eked out a living based on what they brought from the old country and adapting it to Mexico. Although, I admit, families that drop Prinz or Prinzessin in front of their names aren’t exactly the eke-ing kind, they at least did have to dirty their aristocratic fingers with proletarian commerce.

Like Jorge Tabe, the humble Iraqi food vendor of 1930s Puebla, whose native “donkerrey” became thoroughly Mexicanized as tacos al pastor within a generation, the humble little Volkwagen bug the Hohenlowes started selling in the 1950s (and then manufacturing), in Puebla were, within a generation, an iconic Mexican product.

Asked about the Mexican Winter Games budget (zero pesos), Prinz Hubertus said, “taking about money is so vulgar.” Come to think of it, even not-filthy rich Mexicans DON’T talk about money in public. It IS vulger. Besides, the guy has sufficient resources. His own, and from “sponsors” — a word he said in English. Dropping English words, is also very Mexican, at least for a “junior”.

A “junior” is a guy from a rich family — which Hubertus certain is – not a youngster. They’re usually dicks, but pretentious (and usually mispronouned and misused) English words and all, they’re Mexican dicks.

Hubertus is fifty-one years old and has bad knees. It’s all downhill from there, but he’s a skiier, anyway. Anyway, Mexicans respect age, and tend to disregard little things like physical limitations when they take on a job, and there’s something unMexican about retiring early.

And, then again, so is working abroad — there’s not much skiing in Mexico, so Hubertus has been training in Finland, Lebanon and Canada. ¡Muy Mexicano!

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. The writer does point out he was born in Mexico City

and gives more details of where he's lived his life since. In fact, "fled the Nazis for a secure new life in Mexico" isn't accurate. His father was an international businessman, who moved to Mexico in the 50s, and then to Spain when Hubertus was 4.

There's a piece with similar details here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/feb/15/ice-prince-mexico/

[TexasObserver]

22. A 47 year old Houstonian is representing Argentina in the luge.

[Ex Lurker]

24. Peru's olympic hopes ride on a 39 year old Microsoft engineer from Seattle

in the last summer olympics, Italy's baseball team consisted almost entirely of Italian-Americans. Some of whose ancestors arrived on these shores over a hundred years ago. The rules are, shall we say, flexible.

[smalll]

23. Not sure. Got anything to do with Maximillian and Carlotta?

Can he claim to be whatever-in-line for the throne of the Empire of Mexico?

[cherokeeprogressive]

25. SIMPLE. The "Olympics isn't about "the human drama of athletic endeavor". It's about ratings. n/t