Oberhof (pps/February 2, 2010) No happy-end for Bruno Banani: The only luge athlete from the South Seas failed to qualify for the Olympic luge competitions in Vancouver, Canada (February 12-28, 2010). His crash at the Nations Cup in Koenigssee at the beginning of the year proved to be his undoing. This is what his German coach Isabel Barschinski now disclosed. "He failed to collect a World Cup point in Koenigssee and eventually this was the one point he would have needed to qualify". But Bruno Banani intends to compete again on the luge circuit next season.

November 20, 2009 in Calgary, Canada, marked the beginning of this luge adventure for Tonga. This was the day of Bruno Banani's first official start in a luge competition for the archipelagic state in the South Pacific. And he surprisingly earned a remarkable 41st place. Only ten months prior to that date the student of computer sciences had made his first attempts on the artificial ice.

Bruno Banani's luge career took off at a three-week long training course in Altenberg, Germany, in February 2009 followed by additional training weeks in Koenigssee. Then, in summer 2009, the International Luge Federation, FIL, accepted Tonga as provisional member nation. Banani then prepared for the Olympic winter season in Lillehammer, Norway, and Sigulda, Latvia. And he even mastered the first "real" challenge at the International Training Week on the future Olympic track in Whistler for the 2010 Games in Vancouver at the beginning of November - without any crash.

Tonga's commitment in luge started upon an initiative of "Her Royal Highness Princess Pilolevu Tuita", only sister of the ruling king George Tupou V. Their role model is today's Prince Albert of Monaco, who committed himself as heir apparent to the bobsleigh sport, competed in five Olympic Games and still promotes "his" sport in the Principality.

At present, the Kingdom of Tonga, an archipelagic state in the South Pacific, boasts about 101,000 inhabitants. The archipelago comprises 169 islands, formerly also known as "Friendly Islands" - only 36 of those islands are inhabited - and the two Minerva Reefs. Tonga is the only nation in Oceania to have avoided colonization by Europeans. So far, Tonga has made sports headlines mainly thanks to rugby.