Cameroon at the 2002 Winter Olympics Salt Lake City was Cameroon's first appearance at a Winter Olympic Games. The 2002 Winter Olympics were held from 8–24 February 2002; a total of 2,399 athletes representing 77 National Olympic Committees took part. Cameroon sent one athlete to the Salt Lake City Olympics, cross-country skier Isaac Menyoli. He was selected as the flag bearer for the opening ceremony while a ceremony volunteer carried the Cameroonian flag for the closing ceremony. Isaac Menyoli was 29 years old at the time of the Salt Lake City Olympics, and was dedicated to use his Olympic participation to promote the cause of AIDS
Winter Olympic Games War since the Soviet Union first participated at the 1956 Winter Games. It did not take long for the Cold War combatants to discover what a powerful propaganda tool the Olympic Games could be. The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on