UMass Boston Alumnus Competes at the Olympic Winter Games
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Boston Alumnus Competes at the Olympic Winter Games
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By
Leigh DuPuy
It was only last February that Alexander Penna learned how to cross-country ski for the first time. A year later, the UMass Boston alumnus competed at the Olympic Winter Games at Salt Lake City in the 50-kilometer cross-country event. “I liked that I have started from the beginning and I am just going to do my best,” he explained. This is the kind of determination that has always distinguished Penna, who was one of the first-ever UMass Boston students to receive a Fulbright grant.
Penna learned how to cross-country ski while living and working in Norway, where he had traveled in 2000 with the Fulbright grant to study Norwegian party politics. After only a few weeks of skiing, he learned to love the country’s national sport and began to compete in races of 50, 60, and 90 kilometers. However, it wasn’t until a friend urged him to think about competing in the Olympics that Penna began to think about the possibility of participating in the winter games. He spoke with Olympic committees in Sweden, who were helpful and suggested that he contact the committee in Brazil, where his father is from. The Brazilians offered Penna a chance to compete for their country in the event. With their sponsorship, Penna was the first competitor to represent Brazil in Olympic cross-country skiing.
“It was a full-time job,” Penna said, describing
the hard work of planning logistics and training at Lillehammer. However,
the experience was worth it - Penna walked during the opening ceremonies
of the Olympics and finished 58th place in his event.
Penna credits UMass Boston for teaching him how to actively pursue goals
that interests him. He says, “I was treated as an adult and was responsible
for what I wanted to do. It’s real life. It was this and an American
sense of self-empowerment that I can do anything that inspired me.”
The conclusion of the games does not end Penna’s ambitions. He is considering competing in the 2006 Winter Games and is also working on a book on the privatization of the petroleum industry in Europe.