A conversation with Momentous’ Akwasi Frimpong on label accuracy, NSF certification, and building a wellness routine that actually holds up

Akwasi Frimpong has crossed a lot of finish lines. In 2018, he became Ghana’ s first skeleton Olympian, and the first Black athlete ever to compete in the event at the Olympics. In 2020, he became the first African to win an elite, US-sanctioned skeleton race. But ask him what he wishes more people understood about that journey, and he doesn’ t point to the finish line at all.

“ People see‘ first skeleton athlete from Ghana’ and think it was a straight line to the Olympics,” he says.“ It wasn’ t.” For over a decade, Frimpong lived undocumented in the Netherlands, chasing a dream he wasn’ t legally allowed to compete for. He switched sports three times: sprinting, then bobsled, then skeleton, each time hitting a wall, each time looking for another way through.“ The part people miss isn’ t the finish line,” he says.“ It’ s how many times I had to start over with nothing guaranteed.”

That relationship with endurance didn’ t end when he retired from competition. Today, Frimpong serves as Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Momentous, a performance nutrition company, a role that

12 FlexzoneLifeMagazine. com carries the same question forward: what does it take to keep performing, long after the finish line.

“ I look at everything in my life holistically,” he says.“ I ask myself: what can I do to perform better at life as a whole? That includes sports. That includes how to be a better father: how I take care of my family, how I play with my kids. I take care of my body so I can have better output. Those are just some of the things, in regards to wellness, that are important to me.”

It’ s a philosophy he now carries into fatherhood as much as fitness. He and his wife, Erica Shields-Frimpong, cofounded the Hope Of A Billion Foundation in 2022 to bring sports, business, and education opportunities to underserved communities, work inspired, he says, by his own journey and a promise made to his grandmother. But when asked what he most wants his daughters to take from his story, his answer has nothing to do with medals.

“ The legacy I want to leave for my girls, and for the next generation of dreamers, isn’ t just that I made it to the world