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With the Summer Olympics now in the rearview mirror, sports fans are turning their attention to the 2026 games in Italy. And Jacksonite Sharif Zawaideh hopes to be there as the first Jordanian athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics.
KHOL first spoke with Zawaideh in March 2023, soon after he embarked on his quest to compete as a ski racer in the slalom and giant slalom events. Over the past year, he has traveled the world for his training – skiing with teams in Italy, Chile and here in Jackson.
Zawaideh says he’s improved a lot, but still has a long way to go to qualify for the games.
“The first race of the season for the whole Mountain West happened to be at JHMR. And so I showed up to those races and scored better than I did a year ago. But it wasn’t any kind of amazing progress. I think I shaved off 20 points,” Zawaideh said. “I was hoping to shave off 100.”
Skiing is based on a point system – the lower a skier’s points, the faster the skier. At the 2022 Winter Olympics, athletes needed to have a point average of less than 160 in giant slalom or slalom to compete – but the bar changed for 2026 to 120 points.
“And so that 40-point differential is between 4 and 5 additional seconds that I need to make up. I was already trying to make up 20 seconds to begin with. Now you’re throwing five more,” said Zawaideh.
That means shaving off an additional quarter second per turn. Zawaideh explained that the way to do that is to make tighter turns around a gate, which requires a lot of strength — and strength training to get there. On one hand, he says he wishes he had more time to train.
“I wish it was the 2027 Olympics and I had an extra year,” Zawaideh said
But he also says that the sacrifice is sometimes hard to stomach.
“It’s kind of hard to think okay, I’m going to spend another year and a half giving this my all because if I don’t give it my all, I know it’s not possible,” Zawaideh said. “I’m spending all my life savings, all my time. I’m missing out on [my] grandmother’s funeral and friends’ 50th birthday parties and just, you know, life outside of this.”
Zawaideh said he feels internal pressure to see this goal through – and external pressure to not let other skiers down that he is training with – skiers that are often half his age. At age 44, Zawaideh is far older than the average Olympic ski racer, many of whom are still in their teens.
“There’s moments where I’m like, ‘Why would I give this up? This is so much fun,’ and I feel so supported and like, you know, all the people that are telling me that I’m inspiring them, whether it’s because they’re brown or because they’re old or because I’m just old,” Zawaideh said.
He hopes to show the young skiers that once they graduate high school or go to college, ski racing doesn’t have to be over.
The 2024 summer games in Paris brought a new excitement for Zawaideh.
“I’ve never watched the Olympics with so much passion and excitement. And I find myself crying and getting emotional and being so inspired,” Zawaideh said. “When I see the first African nation or the first refugee … it just gives me hope.”
Zawaideh says he hopes to add that diversity to the Winter Games.
Stay tuned to KHOL for more on Zawaideh’s journey over the 2025 season.
