Livigno (Italy) (AFP) – On January 3, Nicolas Claveau, Venezuela's only representative at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games, woke up in his home in Canada and believed that his Olympic dream had evaporated when he saw on television that the United States had captured President Nicolás Maduro.

First modification: 02/11/2026 - 12:23

"The initial plan was that I had to go to Venezuela in that first week of the year to complete the mandatory paperwork requested by the International Olympic Committee, but everyone already knows what happened then, so it was not possible for me to travel. There I totally thought that my plan to go to the Games with Venezuela was not going to work," Claveau, a cross-country skier, acknowledged in an interview with AFP when remembering the anguish of those moments.

He was born 20 years ago in Lechería (Anzoátegui state, east of Caracas), where his father was working as an engineer specializing in water treatment and he lived there until he was two years old.

He had documentation made when he was a baby, but it had expired many years ago because he had never returned to the country since then.

"I had to get a Venezuelan passport and I had to do it there, I couldn't do it in Canada. Without that I wouldn't go to the Olympic Games," he explains in Spanish, a language he learned mainly in the two and a half years he spent during his childhood with his family in Peru, where his father also went to work on another project.

Nicolas couldn't stop watching the news at the beginning of January.

US President Donald Trump appeared to talk about the new situation in Venezuela, claiming to be in control, and two days after the operation to capture Maduro, Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as the country's new interim president.

"A week after everything that happened, the Venezuelan Olympic Committee contacted me to tell me that everything was fine and that I could go to Caracas, that everything was prepared. That's when my enthusiasm returned," he remembers.

"Like a king"

Nicolas Claveau arrived in Venezuela just two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games and was able to complete the necessary bureaucratic procedures.

"When I arrived in Caracas, they welcomed me as if I were a king. I did well all those days, I met many people from there, from the Olympic Committee, many athletes and also the Minister of Sports, Franklin Cardillo," says this engineering student.

"At first I was afraid because I thought it could be a dangerous place, because of the news that reaches us in Canada, which is usually bad about that country, but everything went well on the trip. I saw Caracas, it was a nice trip, I did interviews on television," he confesses excitedly, fascinated by this protagonism to which he is not accustomed.

Claveau later returned to Quebec, where he has lived with his family for more than a decade and where he has been cross-country skiing since he was 10 years old.

Initially he competed with Canada, but he was aware that being an Olympian with that country was an almost impossible mission due to the strong competition, so a year ago he came up with a plan B: why not try to go to Milan-Cortina with his native country?

He found out that Venezuela had a Ski Federation, he contacted them and told them about his case. In November he achieved Olympic qualification in Finland, which allows him to be the country's sixth historical representative in the Winter Games.

The important thing is to participate

"I don't have the level to go to the Games with Canada. The level in Canada is much higher than in Venezuela, where there are only two of us doing cross-country skiing," he explains.

He is living the Olympic experience like a child on Christmas morning: he was seen happy and dancing during the Olympic opening parade, where he was obviously the country's flag bearer, and he did not lose his smile on Tuesday after being 88th out of 94 competitors in the sprint of his sport.

On Friday he has another test, in which he says he hopes for a better performance, the 10 km with free start at intervals.

In a few months he plans to return to Venezuela on vacation.

"I would be very excited to see Lechería, the place where I was born," he smiles.

© 2026 AFP

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