“One of the coaches asked where I raced. I told him it was my first race and he couldn’t believe it. I started Googling where to race around the tri-state area (Connecticut, New York and New Jersey) and found some races and joined those races as well. And the same thing happened. Good results. Very good results.

“I started falling in love with racing and got talking to one of the coaches who asked where I was from. I told him I was from Kosovo and had dual citizenship and he said ‘why don’t you contact the Federation? Maybe you could ski for Kosovo’.

“I thought it was a good idea so I called the Federation and the guy asked me what my name was, then said ‘you know your father taught us how to ski?’. He was one of two or three instructors over there. They said ‘we’ll sign you up and you can represent Kosovo anywhere in the world. Plus, it’s an Olympic year so if you make enough points, you can qualify and come with us!’. Boom. Right there. Blew my mind. Since then I’ve just kept going and kept trying to get the points I need.”

The way the qualification system works, any National Olympic Committee can enter one male and one female skier in the slalom and/or giant slalom events as long as that competitor has less than 140 FIS points to their name when the Olympic FIS Points List is published in January.

“So my father said ‘I trust you. I saved your life once. Save my son’. He took me and we went through a war zone; minefields, soldiers coming out of the woods stopping our car. I had to carry his gun pretending I was a Serb. Once I stepped out of the car in Montenegro he told me ‘if I ever see you out fighting in the field, you’re going to be the first one to die’. That was it. We didn’t see each other ever again.

“I was searching for my parents for four or five months after being alone in Montenegro and Albania and Macedonia and finally I found them through a charity service. My father told me I had to go to Macedonia because I had signed up to go to America. At that time Bill Clinton had signed a paper which said the country would take a certain amount of refugees and I was one of them. It took me four days to cross the border and the next day we flew to America.”

The 5.30am, twice-daily training sessions don’t seem so rough when you’ve heard the backstory behind how the man got to America. And it makes the fact that Besnik doesn’t feel the pressure when he clips into his racing skis a whole easier to understand.

“Being from Kosovo and having survived the war, and being that I live in Brooklyn and that I’m a father, a married man and a boxer, my mentality is strong,” he says. “Sometimes people don’t understand why I’m so happy and content with my life. You don’t know how it is to be under the sniper or God forbid, you could stand on a mine or get shot or stabbed again. That’s why I’m always happy and smiling. It’s not just a cliche, it’s another day in paradise.

“Everyone is so serious at these races and I’m laughing, smiling and just having fun. You know? I’m going as fast as possible and I’m having a blast.”

Besnik has spent the past few months chasing points at races around the world, most recently in South Africa and South America. The former was more successful than the latter. 

Heavy snow saw nine out of 11 races in Argentina cancelled, and Besnik was disqualified from one of those remaining two races for missing a gate which video evidence later showed he didn’t actually miss.

That spot of bad luck would be nothing compared to the plague of misfortune that met, and almost killed, the New Yorker on his return to the airport in Argentina, though.

“The coolest comments I’ve got were that kids wanted to ski with me one day and parents saying they’d had their kids read my story, which is just great! And of course on a second note people asking if they can help with the monetary fund or if they could send anything like a helmet or goggles, which is also really cool because they see that a war refugee, a father, a worker, a husband, has just picked up racing and is doing so well.”

Besnik’s wife Flutura has raised a full $11,400 through GoFundMe so far, and big name brands in the sport have been helping out the skier as well. Giro recently hooked him up with both a state-of-the-art helmet and a pair of Contact goggles. Sokoli’s gratefulness and humility throughout all this have been admirable enough to bring a smile to anyone’s face.

Understandably the comparisons have been rushing in between Besnik and Eddie the Eagle and the Cool Runnings crew. He admits with a laugh that he sees the similarities, though highlights: “my Federation are awesome people, they just don’t have the monetary funds.”

It may seem like insanity to be chasing a spot in the Winter Olympics having only raced for the first time just a few months previously, and to be funding the entire thing from his own pocket, but to Besnik it’s an opportunity he’s fully confident he can capitalise on.

“As an Albanian, as a Kosovo person, it would mean the world to me to compete in the Olympic Games,” he says. “My father passed away but he’s the one that taught me [how to ski] and I owe everything to him.

“I’m either going to make it or I’m going to die trying…”

“Personally as well, I wanted my kids to love skiing and now they want to race and be in the Olympics and try their best, and to see that as a father… plus other kids who come over and say ‘can you teach me?’ – that is bigger than what I’m trying to do. That just makes my day.

“I know I’m going to do it. I know I’m going to go through. My determination is out there. I’m either going to make it or I’m going to die trying.”

And as you should know by now, it’s not easy to kill Besnik Sokoli. So remember the name, and if you do see it appear on your television during the Winter Olympics, remember the tale that goes with it – and the moral that anything is possible with enough hard work.

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